Built To Fall
by psquare
Summary: AU. Dean's resurrected after Sam's broken the final seal. He comes back to a world on the brink; to a guilt-ridden and demon-blood-addicted brother; to angels pushing him toward a nebulous destiny. Until help arrives from an unexpected source... COMPLETE
1. Part One

**_A/N:_** This was written for the **spn_gen_bigbang** over on LJ. For more details and the awesome art by **apieceofcake**, do have a look here: emmram (dot) livejournal (dot) com (slash) 37261 (dot) html.

**Warnings: **SPOILERS for all of s4 and s5, blood, gore, violence, some foul language, character death, heavy-duty angst, weirdness, metaphor-abuse.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Supernatural _or any of its characters.

**_Built To Fall_**

"I hope you're ready."

Yeah, sure.

"I mean, this isn't some place you can just jump back from when someone wants you to. This is _it_."

I know that, already—just get on with it.

"No reconsidering?"

For god's sake—

"This is important."

I have to do this. It's never been more vital, and might never be again.

"Good luck, then."

* * *

><p>Dean Winchester woke up to a bright blue sky and the sound of birds.<p>

It was cold and damp, and there was a nagging thought pulling at the corners of his mind that there was some place that he ought to be, something else that he ought to be doing, but Dean let himself drift, watching the clouds. There was one cloud that had a rather pleasing resemblance to a pair of well-endowed breasts stuffed into a white camisole—Lindsey Turner, maybe? No, definitely Megan Stockton from that time in Oklahoma when he and Sam—

_Sam_.

Dean sat up quickly, coughing as he sucked in cold air. He realised he was on a bench in the middle of a park, getting suspicious glares from early-morning joggers and the occasional critter as they went by. He wasn't sure what kind of drinking binge could've gotten him here: he felt okay, if a little light-headed, but he couldn't for the life of him remember the last thing he'd been doing. It wasn't a hangover, and it wasn't the aftermath of a particularly nasty hunt; and if Sam had just left him out here in the name of some stupid _prank_, he was going to—

There was a sudden stab of white-hot pain in his abdomen and he curled forward, hissing. It intensified until his fingers were scrabbling at the bench, nails scratching fruitlessly against the wood. It faded slowly, leaving him sweating and panting.

(_remember what i taught you_)

He lifted his shirt to see what had felt like a great big, guts-gaping-out kind of wound right across his—

(_NO! Please, no, no—stop it!_)

There was nothing there. He looked perfectly okay—_too_ okay, really: even that winding, knotted scar from when he was nearly eviscerated by a werewolf at the ripe old age of seventeen was gone. Dean couldn't help but feel that there was something he was missing here, something _important_...

(_you're going to hell. and this? is what you're going to become!_)

Dean nearly fell off the bench as he remembered.

He sprang to his feet and grabbed the nearest newspaper he could find. It was the _Pontiac Daily Leader_, and it was dated the fifteenth of May, 2009.

A year. He'd been gone (_dead_) a whole _year_.

It was when he began digging in his pockets for clues that he realised he was even wearing the same clothes that he'd worn that night, except they weren't hanging off him in great bloody strips: no, perfectly okay, just like the rest of him, _and what the hell was he even doing_—

Right. Okay. He was panicking, and clearly, that wasn't getting him anywhere. He needed to—he needed to find Sam (_i swear to god sammy if you've done something monumentally __**stupid**_), get in touch with Bobby, try to figure out just how he managed to get topside when by all rights he should be languishing in Hell right now, and _why the hell he couldn't remember any of it_.

(Not that that was a bad thing, he reflected a moment later. Y'know, hell and pain and torture—nobody really wanted the details.)

He had nothing on him except his boot knife, but that didn't really matter, well-versed as he was in the Many Arts of Bull-Shitting Your Way To What You Want (copyright, Winchester, Winchester and Winchester), and so half-an-hour later, he found himself hotwiring a shiny new Honda and driving down Route 116, on the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He stopped on the way for food and beer when the road began to dip and sway and sort of plunge into the surroundings in a nauseatingly disconcerting way, but didn't stop or slow down otherwise until he was pulling into Bobby's salvage yard.

It hadn't changed much over the last year—hadn't changed much at all, really, since the first time he'd been here, seven years old and scared out of his wits. The half-rusted remnants of engines and machinery and the hulking, bent-out-of-shape chassis from when they used to think bigger was better had seemed like monsters then. Now, they were just dead and broken pieces of metal. Dean wasn't sure which of the two he preferred.

He'd already walked up to the front door when he realised that showing up on Bobby's doorstep after being dead for a year without so much as a phone-call was probably not a great idea; there was no telling how Bobby would react (_with shotguns and holy water and silver knives, how the else did he expect him to react_), if he even knew where Sam was, if he was even _alive_—

The door opened. "You're going to be standing out there all day, boy, or are you going to come in?"

Dean blinked. "Bobby?"

Bobby smiled. He didn't look much different, either: his face was more lined, tired-looking, Dean imagined, but he wasn't sure what the hell that even meant. People got old. Even Bobby, even if it was hard to believe sometimes.

"It's good to see you, Dean," he said, spreading his arms. Dean hugged him a little tentatively, wondering if it was his turn to be breaking out the salt and holy water. "Christo," he said, and Bobby only chuckled. "He did say you were coming back," Bobby said, pulling back, "and he might be a self-righteous stick-in-the-mud, but he's never been wrong before."

Dean looked over his shoulder, frowning. "Who did? Sam—where the hell is Sam?" He pushed past Bobby in his haste to get inside and find his brother. "Did you and Sam do this, huh? Did you just think that, hey, it would be great idea to start bartering _souls _again? Sam!" There was no answer, and Dean rounded on Bobby, furious. "I thought _you'd_ know better, Bobby, than to have him start repeating—"

"You'd better be thankful that I'm not just throwing you out on your ass for bargin' in here and throwing around accusations like you know everything," Bobby said, raising an eyebrow. "It wasn't your brother who popped you outta hell, though god knows he tried."

"Then who _did_, huh?" Dean ran a hand through his hair, tried to slow his breathing. "I'm sorry, Bobby. It's just—friggin' waking up on a park bench after the last thing you remember is being torn apart by hell-hounds—"

"I'd hoped it would be more convenient than a closed grave," came a quiet, gruff voice from behind his shoulder, and Dean swivelled to find himself face-to-face with a thin, stubbled countenance about three inches too far into his personal space. He stepped back, blinking. "What the—"

"That's Castiel," Bobby said, and Dean could swear that he heard a grin in his voice. "He's the one who pulled you out."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Castiel said nothing. His eyes flicked minutely to Dean's shoulder, and Dean felt a sudden, sharp pain in his right upper arm. He rolled up his sleeve to see a burn mark against the skin, perfectly shaped like a human hand. Dean wasn't completely sure how he hadn't noticed a giant red handprint on his arm until then, or what kind of mojo this skinny little guy in the trenchcoat had that had him freakin _burn_ people without them noticing.

"It means," Castiel said, "I gripped you tight and raised you from Perdition."

Dean had barely opened his mouth (_yeah, sure, that makes a lot more sense, thanks_) when a muffled scream echoed through the house. "Dean," it said, twisted with pain and fear and a kind of hysteria that made Dean's blood run cold. "_Dean_!"

Bobby flinched. "Basement," was all he said.

Dean barrelled past him. "Sam!"

* * *

><p>Dean could hear the screams clearly, now, and wondered how he'd ever missed it. He was in front of what appeared to be a huge iron door in Bobby's basement that he was pretty sure hadn't been there a year ago. <em>Reinforced salted iron<em>, Bobby'd said. _Protection against every known evil fugly out there_.

It was a supernatural Panic Room, probably one of the safest places in the world to keep evil out (_and in_)—and right now Sammy was locked up and screaming right inside it.

Dean wasn't sure he wanted to know the _why_s or _how_s of the situation just then; all he could feel was a bubbling horror at what shit could've possibly gone down while he was stuck Down Under, and how deep his brother could be mired in it.

He watched as Bobby opened the door, the mechanism creaking ominously as he turned it. "You've got to remember, Dean," he said, "Sam's... not himself, right now. You have to understand—"

"If you're trying to not freak me out, I gotta say, you're not exactly doing a bang-up job of it."

Bobby rolled his eyes and pushed open the door. The screams stopped as he did so, and Dean felt a small rush of air next to him; he turned to see Castiel by his side. "Do not be fooled by what you see, Dean," he said, narrowing his eyes at the open door. "An abomination can come in many guises."

"If you can all shut up," Dean growled, "I'll actually go see what's wrong with my brother." He stalked into the room—it was tall and dank, made entirely of iron, with the sole source of light coming from a slow-whirring fan set high on one wall. The ceiling and floors were adorned with devil's traps and various other protective sigils, half of which Dean was sure he wouldn't even recognise. The only furniture in the room was a cot in the centre—its railings trailing iron manacles—and a table with a mirror.

Sam sat hunched on the floor, leaning against the bed, knees drawn up to his chest.

"Sam." Dean stepped toward him, registering for the first time how the room smelled—of salt and sweat and blood and vomit and citrusy floor cleaner. Sam's clothes were filthy, stuck to his skin with sweat, and his bangs, greasy and overgrown, hung over his face as he stared at the floor between his legs. Dean began to wonder just _how_ long Sam'd been cooped up here, and the presence of the manacles wasn't exactly helping to ease Dean's rising misgivings. "Sam," he said again, crouching in front of his brother, placing a tentative hand on his knee. "Sammy, hey."

Sam was shaking under his touch, minute tremors running through his body like he was cold but too tired to do anything about it. He lifted his head slowly, stared at Dean with a weary, but focussed, gaze. "Hey," he said quietly.

Dean snorted. "Here I am, back from the dead, and nobody even has the decency to look surprised." He lifted his hand to push Sam's hair out of his eyes, and nearly pulled it back with a hiss as he felt how hot Sam's skin was. "Shit, man, you're burning."

"No, I'm not," Sam said, his voice so hoarse and dry that just listening to it made Dean's throat hurt. "You are. Always." He looked a little beyond Dean's shoulder and smiled, although it was a horrible smile, jagged and bitter and about as completely devoid of humour as it could get. "Been watching you for a while. He's very proud, you know."

Dean felt a sudden fear clutch at his throat with icy fingers. "What're you talking about?"

Just as suddenly, Sam's hands shot out, clutching at the lapels of Dean's jacket and pulling him in with astonishing strength. Although Sam was ill and pale, skin stretched tight over bone, Dean couldn't help but notice how much bigger he'd gotten, how much more muscle bunched over his shoulders. "Please," Sam said, and to Dean's shock, he was actually _crying_, "please, I'm so sorry, please let me go there now, _please_—I can't, not here—"

Then his whole body went rigid, his eyes rolled back, and he started jerking in uncontrolled spasms.

"_Bobby!_" Dean caught Sam's hands in one of his own, slid another behind his head so that he didn't crack his skull open on the bed railings, all coherent thought out of his head other than _Sam's having a seizure_ and _this is the weirdest fucking day I've ever had, and that's saying a lot_. Bobby ran in and got painfully to his knees next to Dean, but Sam had already stopped shaking, lying limp and so still that Dean splayed his hand over Sam's chest just to make sure he was breathing.

And so, yes, Sam did have a flair for melodrama, but this was really fucking too much (_and really fucking terrifying_). "The hell, Bobby?"

Bobby's mouth twisted in a sort of helpless desperation, and he scratched the back of his neck. "It's... a long story, Dean, and it ain't a happy one."

"Ya think?" Dean retorted, unable to help himself. He looked down at Sam, sighed. "Let's just—let's just get him on the bed, first." He and Bobby got Sam's gigantic form onto the bed between them, and despite Dean's protests, Bobby secured the manacles around Sam's wrists and ankles. "He's going to need 'em," was all he'd say by way of explanation.

"Continuing in this fashion," said Castiel from where he was standing just outside the door of the Panic Room, "is not beneficial to anybody—least of all to Sam, or dealing with what's inside of him."

"Only the ten thousandth time he's said that," Bobby muttered to Dean, rolling his eyes. "The only wonder is that he hasn't tried to kill Sam himself, yet."

And just like that, Dean had had enough. "We could stop dancing around the elephant in the room," Dean said, raising his eyebrows, "and give the resurrected guy here some answers, because, otherwise? I _will_ freak out, and it will not be pretty."

Bobby looked from him to Castiel and back again, and sighed. "How much do you know about the Apocalypse?"

* * *

><p>"<em>Dean's back," (he) says, his face twisted into that awful facsimile of sympathy—head tilted, smiling, eyes glittering with black mockery. "Imagine that. Imagine waking up a year after you were killed; imagine waking up and coming back to the brother you went to Hell for; imagine him doing things from your worst nightmares." (He) settles down on the floor, cross-legged, and rests (his) chin in (his) hand. "Imagine coming back to realise that you'd died for a monster."<em>

"_No," Sam says, shaking his head, although that makes the world swirl and shift nauseatingly, "It's not him, it's—he can't be." He swallows convulsively. "I failed. He can't. He won't know."_

_(He) shakes (his) long hair out of (his) eyes. "Oh, Sam. I know how crushing it must be—to know that you did what you thought was right, and to have your family __**hate**__ you for it, throw you into a prison to die and rot for eternity." (He) smiles again. "You know that was your brother. Deny it all you want, but deep down... you __**know**__."_

"_Please." Sam tries to curl into himself, finds that he can't, feels ice-cold restraints coiled around his arms and legs. He's burning, oh god he's burning, and maybe when every single thing inside him boils over, he'd rise out of the restraints. Maybe he'd become demonic smoke, maybe he'd actually die (_oh god he wishes he dies_)— "Please get out."_

"_I would," (he) says, "if I __**could**__. But when I __**am**__ you, Sam, there's only one way I'm getting out of your head."_

_An inexplicable anger fills Sam's limbs, ignites his nerves like fire, heady like demon-blood. "I'm __**never**__ saying yes!" He jerks against the manacles, feels like he's about to burst. "You did this to me!" he screams. _

_(He) shrugs. "I did this to you, you did this to you... what's the difference?"_

_Sam screams incoherently, feeling the burn concentrate in his lungs and bubble up his throat. He turns and spits, and sees his anger drip red and black and viscous onto the floor. "No," he says. "I will kill you—__**kill**_**—**_" He chokes again. _

_(He) laughs. "Please do try—your anger is delicious."_

_The fire builds inside of him, feeding itself like a nuclear breeder reactor, until he can't make a difference between _pain _and _power_ and it's the closest he's ever gotten to having demon-blood again. He pulls in his left hand viciously, feels something break, and then his hand is free. He ignores the pain sparking down the length of his arm, sharp and white-hot, and twists to fumble awkwardly at the manacle around his right wrist. He can feel (him) hovering nearby, can feel (his) hot breath, the—_

"_Let me help you, Sam," (he) says, and gently strokes the manacle. It snaps open, even as blood bubbles like lava over Sam's lips. (He) repeats the process with the restraints around his ankles, and Sam rolls off the cot onto the floor and rests there for some time, cheek against cold concrete, taking in short, wet breaths. _

_For a moment, the fire recedes, and Sam thinks: _Dean. _Oh god, __**Dean**__—_

_Then (he)'s got (his) hands under Sam's shoulders, pulling until (he)'s hoisted Sam to his feet. "I gotcha," (he) says, and something inside Sam aches with familiarity and loss—so much loss—but everything's washed away by anger (_like always_), pure and clean, and he hates that (he) even __**dare**__ imitate his brother; hates himself that he lies here, tainted and evil, unable to do anything to deal with the mess that he unleashed on the world; unable to justify any of the love or faith that Dean placed in him._

_He surges to his feet, spitting the blood pooling in his mouth, dripping down the back of his throat. (He) smiles—proud, Sam thinks, and his hate only increases—and gestures toward the door. The cast-iron door opens almost without a sound, and Sam staggers out. The burning in his chest is excruciating now, but he keeps moving, one arm wrapped loosely around his chest, the other blindly groping for handholds._

_Jessica is at the top of the stairs of the basement, still in the nightdress she burned to death in, one hand outstretched. "Sam," she says, but for the first time she doesn't ask _why_, only _when—when are you going to stop destroying everything you touch, everything you love, and everything that loves you—_and Sam doesn't have answers _(he's never had answers for her, only regret_), but he thinks he has a purpose, now_ _(_douse that horrible fire that was burning down the last of his resistance_)_, _and so he keeps going._

_It's daylight outside of Bobby's basement, and it stabs into his eyes like knives. He leans heavily against the wall as he walks down the corridor, leaving a trail of red among the browns and yellows and blacks that sort of meld into each other without warning. He can feel (his) presence right behind him, and when he steps over and around things he can barely see and staggers on and on, he thinks it is only because of (his) guidance._

"_I only want to help you, Sam," (he) says, over and over and over, "To help __**us**_."

_Suddenly he feels somebody in front of him, clutching at his biceps, shaking him, shouting in his ear. He blinks furiously, and Dean's face comes swimmingly into focus. "Sam," he's saying, the word stretching and distorting until it's a barely recognisable sound, which is odd, because Sam can hear (his) voice crystal-clear and it's urging him to keep going. _

"_Sam, please," Dean says, and his voice breaks at the end of the _please_ in a way that's nothing but sadness and regret and disappointment, and Sam can't take it anymore, he really __**can't**__. He swallows more blood, rears back a fist and hits Dean as hard as he can. As Dean falls, more hands come up to stop him, but he throws more fists, feels the satisfying smack of flesh and bone under his knuckles, and he keeps running._

_He runs, and Lucifer runs with him_.

* * *

><p>"An <em>angel<em>."

Dean took a swig of the beer Bobby'd just handed him, hoping that maybe, just maybe, when he put the bottle down, he'd be back on that park bench, waking up after being slipped some demonic-scale mickey. But no dice—he was still standing over Bobby's kitchen tale, where Bobby'd just told him that the constipated tax accountant in the trenchcoat was an angel—an honest to God _angel_—that'd just pulled him out of hellfire like he was a human-shaped lump of marshmallow.

"I know it's a lot to take in at once," Bobby said, "but a hell of a lot's been going down while you were—well, not here."

"Which included a Biblical Apocalypse, right," Dean said, nodding. "I'm still not terribly enlightened, here."

"It has been written," Castiel intoned, "that when the sixty-six seals are broken, Lucifer will walk the Earth, and he will bring its end with him." He looked at Dean with the sort of gaze somebody else might call 'piercing', but Dean? Yeah, he was still leaning toward 'constipated'. "The sixty-six seals have been broken. Your world is on the brink of destruction."

Dean licked his lips, settled down in a chair. "Now—I'm not exactly an expert on these things, but if Satan's out of the Pit, shouldn't something, I don't know, be happening? I mean, yeah, the world's a shitty place to live in, but I haven't exactly seen frogs falling from the sky or oceans boiling over, y'know?"

Bobby began to look uncomfortable for the first time since the conversation started. "It's a little more complicated than that. Dean—"

"Your brother broke the final seal," Castiel cut in, and _now_ there was rage in his eyes, an ethereal light coiling and twisting somewhere deep within, and for the first time Dean thought he could believe that Castiel was a being with the kind of power to level whole cities in seconds. "He brought Lucifer out of his Cage—and into him."

Dean snorted. "_What_?" He laughed, looking from Castiel to Bobby, but the latter was grim, even fearful. "No way. You're shitting me."

"I do not understand this denial," Castiel said, sounding frustrated. "You saw your brother. You saw... what he is, the kind of state he's brought himself to."

(_please i'm sorry let me go there now_)

"It's _Sam_," Dean said bluntly. "I don't know what's with him right now, but—"

"Sam killed Lillith, Dean," Bobby said. "Killing Lillith _was_ the final seal. The bastards had it all planned out—Sam used his demon-mojo, hunted down the bitch, killed her... and popped the goddamn devil outta his cage as a result." He leaned forward, gripping the back of a chair hard enough that his knuckles were white. "Lucifer's... _inside_ Sam, right now. Crammed in the back of his mind like some sort of parasite. Once Sam loses control... once Sam says _yes..._ Lucifer takes over. And the whole world goes to shit."

Dean kind of wanted to shoot something—preferably the bastard in the trenchcoat—like never before in his life (_if i become something i'm not_), damn the consequences (_you have to promise to kill me_). "Is that—is that why he's—"

"That's withdrawal," Bobby told him flatly. "At least that's what we think it is—see, Sam was chugging down demon-blood to fuel his... power, whatever you want to call it. It was—" Bobby shook his head. "It was like the worst kind of drug, Dean. He was—we had to lock him up."

Dean looked at them for a long moment, then started laughing. If there was a hysterical edge to his laughter, well, he felt pretty damn entitled to some hysteria after being resurrected by a freakin _angel_ and told that his brother was a demon-blood junkie who just set Satan free. Speaking of which—"_Demon-blood_? Really?" He strode over to pull out the handgun he knew Bobby stored in a small cupboard right above the stove. "Look. I don't know what kind of bullshit this bastard's been feeding you, but from what I can see, Sammy's really, really sick, and you're freakin _locking him up_ in a cage like an animal." He levelled the gun at Castiel.

Bobby... seemed remarkably unconcerned. "How else do you think you're here, Dean? Castiel—"

"So tell me," Dean growled, "_why_ did you bring me back, huh? Why now? Why not stop Sam before all this went down?"

"You were brought here," Castiel said, "because God commanded it. Because you can stop the Apocalypse, Dean. You can stop your brother."

Dean pulled the trigger.

The bullet went into Castiel's forehead. He seemed completely unfazed, however, and the bullet squeezed itself out and clattered onto the tabletop, covered with what should be bits of Castiel's brain. The grotesque wound closed itself.

Dean stared.

"Dammit, Dean! Of all the trigger-happy idjits to ever come here, you Winchesters—"

"Every word I say," Castiel said quietly, "every action I take, is God's will. Nothing in this world can kill what your brother's become—except you, Dean. That is why you've been brought here."

Dean hadn't really processed everything—was in no state to process anything, ever, except _are you sure this is one hundred percent pure Sam_ and _he will lead our army_ running through his mind, over and over again—when they heard noises from behind them. Dean turned to see Sam stagger to the kitchen doorway, trailing blood and looking more like a zombie than any of the zombies that Dean had ever seen. There was blood dripping in great thick globs from his mouth and chin and nose, eyes bloodshot and crazed, and he was swaying on his feet, looking as if he was going to fall over any second.

Dean didn't waste any time. "Sam!" He grabbed at Sam's arms, tried to keep him upright. Sam didn't seem to be able to focus on him, though—his pupils were pinpricks, and the heat radiating off him was unbelievable. "C'mon, man, don't do this."

Again Sam's eyes finally rested on a point somewhere above Dean's shoulder, and his face contorted in a weird mixture of relief, fear and rage. "Need... to go..." he said, pushing awkwardly at Dean, trying to break free.

"He needs the demon-blood," came Castiel's voice, low and even and quietly repulsed, and Dean couldn't fucking take it anymore. "Sam, _please_," he said. _Please don't be who they say you are_.

Sam jerked in his hands, suddenly focussing on Dean. But they couldn't really count this as progress, though—for, the next moment, Dean's vision was filled with the sight of Sam's bloody knuckles. There was a sharp burst of pain across the side of his face, "_Dean_!", and then darkness.

* * *

><p>Sam had spent two hours staring at a bloodstain on his jeans in a dirty motel room in Madras, Oregon, when his brother walked into the room. Dean didn't say anything, just sat on the bed across from Sam (Sam had asked for two beds out of the force of habit—or maybe because of that little part of him that refused to be crushed that kept saying Dean would come for him) and they spent a few minutes in silence.<p>

Dean was the one who hated uncomfortable silences, so Sam surprised himself by asking, hoarsely, "How did you find me?"

Dean rolled his shoulders and looked away, like Sam'd just asked a stupid question, and Sam figured that, yeah, it _was_ a stupid question. Dean knew him scarily well, and even after everything, that probably would never change.

"You left a trail about as wide as the Pacific Ocean," Dean told him dryly. "Just had to find the nearest site of demonic presence and ask around for a bloody maniac."

"Oh." Sam looked down at his jeans again.

A few more minutes passed before Sam dared to look at his brother. There was no anger—not yet, not like he'd been expecting—just exhaustion. And disappointment. That hurt worse than any angry barbs Dean could've flung at him, but Sam probably deserved it.

It had occurred to him, while draining a second demon of its blood, that this was the Sam Winchester that Dean had come back to, that he was now one of the creatures that Dean would want to corner and kill like some nameless, faceless monster. He didn't want to think about what it said about how far he'd fallen that he'd just continued drinking.

"Castiel says he's under orders not to touch you," Dean said. He laughed hollowly. "_Angels_, man. And you?" He shook his head. "Goddamn worst week in my life, and that's saying a lot."

"I'm sorry, Dean."

"Yeah, whatever," Dean said, and looked away.


	2. Part Two

**_Part Two_**

It started with a case in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska—and wings.

It hadn't been long before he'd sought out Sam again; not long _enough_ before they started hunting together again. Castiel had disappeared soon after Sam had taken off—seriously, if Castiel was any indication, Heaven could _not_ be all that it was cracked up to be—leaving Dean with a missing and messed-up-to-all-Hell brother and no answers. All Dean knew was that somehow, the world was ending, and _somehow_, he was meant to stop it without killing his brother (because for all that Sam was a gigantic Apocalypse-starting asshole, Dean was pretty sure he didn't want him dead).

Sam was—well, Dean didn't know (_he didn't want to know_). There were times when Sam would be so closed-off, so completely caught up in his own head, that Dean would wonder if he opened his eyes, it'd the devil that stared through them. Most other times, he was just... quiet. He barely ate and drank very little, let Dean take the lead without protest on practically every case, spent hours and hours on obscure research, and would look at him with those wet, wounded eyes that would drive Dean up the wall. If Sam thought that he was doing some sort of penance by wasting away like this, well, _screw him_, because it wasn't enough. _Nothing_ would ever be enough.

Maybe the reason Dean didn't want to kill his brother was because Sam was already dead.

There were several nights when Sam would disappear for hours together. Usually it would be around the time that he began to get sick again, coughing wetly into his shirtsleeve, blinking at Dean through unfocussed, rheumy eyes. Dean would pretend to sleep when Sam would stumble into the room just before dawn, collapse into his bed and sleep like the dead until late next afternoon. Neither of them ever really talked about what he did those nights, but they both knew.

Sam tried to explain to him, once: that, to keep himself alive and healthy enough to keep saying _no_ to Lucifer, he needed the blood. _He's stronger in my mind the weaker I get_, Sam told him, with a sort of tired earnestness. _I can—I can keep him... locked away, most times. But it's not—it's not always—I'm sorry, Dean_.

(_if you apologise one more time i swear i **will** end you sammy_)

_I tried to—I tried to stop it. I mean, _Sam laughed weakly_, how can you stop what's inside you, right? I tried, Dean. But I couldn't die. He wouldn't let me._

(_you have to promise_)

Dean didn't say much to that, and if Sam felt any disappointment at the lack of response, he didn't show it. It wasn't like Dean could _tell_ anymore, anyway.

Their latest case was a series of mysterious disappearances in Garfield, Nebraska, which had just taken a turn for the worse, with the bodies of the missing people turning up on the outskirts of town, mutilated and completely drained of blood. _It seems pretty much like an open-and-shut case_, Bobby'd told him. _Shouldn't be much of a problem—just both of you idjits take care of yourselves, okay?_

Sure. It wasn't like they had much of a choice.

The night they arrived in town was also one of Sam's disappearing nights. Dean lay on the bed and closed his eyes while Sam quietly slipped out, and Dean tried not to think too hard about the irony of the whole thing. _Got a vampire of my own. But that's okay. He only drinks demon-blood and just happens to host the devil_.

Around midnight, he heard the sound of wings.

His first instinct was to reach for the knife under the pillow and run through a quick inventory of the protections in the room: salt lines, sigils in holy water over the windows, devil's traps under the carpet and over the ceiling, even goofer dust, because, hey, it never hurt to be too careful (_sic 'em, boys_). With the silver knife in his hand, a .44 on the nightstand and a _come and fucking get me if you dare _attitude, Dean figured he had pretty much every supernatural fugly out there covered.

"Hello, Dean," came a voice from behind him.

It was a man—or what _looked_ like one, anyway—small-chinned and balding, dressed in a fairly anonymous-looking suit and tie, smiling at him like popping into other people's bedrooms in the middle of the night was just as routine, as, well, popping into other people's bedrooms in the middle of the night to _fucking kill them_, and screw it, Dean was wasting time here. "Christo," he said, bringing his knife up, but the man didn't flinch; he just laughed.

"Let's cut to the chase, shall we?" he said. "None of those little protections you've got will work against me." He paused, twisted his mouth in a mock-contemplative expression. "Well, yeah, there is the entertainment value, but, really, we don't have time we can afford to lose."

Dean didn't let go of his knife. "Let me guess," he said. "You're from the big corporate office in the sky."

"I've heard you've a mouth on you." The man smiled. "My name is Zachariah."

"Oh, good. I hope you've come with a How to Save the World blueprint, because your friend hasn't been much of a help in that regard."

Zachariah sat down on the bed across from him (_on **Sam's** bed, and Dean still couldn't help a sliver of _Sam'smissingSam_ from chilling him from the inside-out_) and continued smiling in a way that was already starting to get on Dean's nerves. "It's really not that complicated, Dean. I mean, all you need to do is agree."

Dean snorted. "I am _not_ killing my brother, if that's what you mean."

Zachariah tilted his head. "You so sure about that? I mean, look at him. Demon-blood, housing the devil, starting the Apocalypse, all that." He shook his head. "You don't even want to know what he was up to while you were under. Killing him would be about the biggest mercy you can give him at this stage."

Dean gritted his teeth, gripped the knife to stop himself from shaking. "Still not doing it."

That only got him another laugh. Constipated tax accountants to smug assholes, Dean was pretty sure he could testify that angels were not the rainbow-spewing cherubs that Sam probably once thought they were. "We're not asking you to," Zachariah said. "Well—not right way, anyway. You are important for another reason, Dean."

"Right, other than stopping the Apocalypse," Dean said, rolling his eyes, but he had barely finished when the air around him seemed charged, prickling against his skin like electricity and making his hairs stand on end. It hovered on just this side of pain, but Zachariah was just sitting there, still (_goddammit_) smiling.

"You think so much of yourself, don't you?" he said. "I mean, sure. I should've seen it coming. Seen one monkey, you've seen them all." He got up, started walking toward Dean, but Dean couldn't move, hell, he could barely even _breathe_. "When Lucifer first went to the Cage, it was Michael who put him there. Yes, the archangel Michael," Zachariah continued impatiently, as if Dean was going to say something, as if Dean _could_ say anything. "Now that Lucifer's back, we need Michael back. And for Michael to come back, he needs a vessel. With me so far?"

Dean glared at him, and hoped that whatever angel mojo that had him paralysed also meant Zachariah had full access to every goddamn thing Dean intended to tell him in his head.

Zachariah just smiled wider. "_You're_ that vessel, Bronco. All you need to do is say _yes_. It's that simple. Even for you, I should imagine."

The electric hold on Dean finally eased enough for him to be able to speak. "And if I do?"

"The devil is banished, the world is saved. That enough of a blueprint for you?"

_The devil in my brother's body_. Yeah, Heaven was not only full of dicks, but also seemed to have a sense of melodrama that was better off on _Days of our Lives_. Or something. That still didn't explain—"Why me? I'm sure there're loads of people out there who'd be more than willing."

Zachariah was closer now, close enough now that Dean thought if he dipped his head forward, they could bump foreheads. Absurdly, the thought made him want to giggle. "Oh, I think you know the answer," Zachariah said, reaching up with one hand. "I think you know it very well."

He touched Dean's forehead with two fingers, the world went a sudden, blinding white, and something inside Dean's mind fractured. He barely caught a glimpse of Zachariah, white light leaking from his eyes and mouth and through every pore of his skin, black shadowy wings stretching on either side, before he was blind, falling, pinwheeling through an eternal _nothing_, and it hurt, _hurt_, like someone had just driven a steamroller over his head and then set it on fire—

—Dean held his favourite knife in his hand, practically shivering with anticipation. There was a soft touch on his arm, a sibilant whisper in his ear, urging him on: _This is it, Dean. Live now. **Live**. _And Dean didn't hesitate any more, didn't even consider it, as he plunged the knife in and began slicing. Blood flew in little arcs as he worked, and it was beautiful: sometimes, if he concentrated hard enough, he could make time lurch and move in ways that made every drop of blood another stroke in a living, moving work of art; made every scream another note in a symphony of agony. It was art, and it was science, and when he cut through skin and fat and muscle and crushed and pried away the ribs and held the impossibly-beating heart in his hand, it was power, it was unmatched joy. It was _life_.

For the first time since he started, he looked up at the face of the soul he was cutting into, and bloodshot hazel eyes looked back at him, glazed and half-dead (_but never **dead**, oh no, never dead, Dean won't allow it_). He said, "Always did think you were too much of a bleeding heart, Sam," and tightened his grip. Sam arched weakly (can't really get it right with half a rib-cage missing) and gurgled, blood dripping black and viscous down his chin. But he was still saying something; lips moving, voice nothing more than a hoarse whisper after an eternity spent screaming: _Dean dean dean dean—_

Well, that just wouldn't do.

Dean forced open his jaw and sliced off his tongue, and then reached up and sliced open one eye on the upstroke of the knife for good measure. Sam continued making garbled, incomprehensible noises for a few minutes until he couldn't anymore, his lungs struggling and failing to expand against all the blood.

He wouldn't kill Sam, though. Sometimes Sam would die on his own, sometimes Dean would get excited and go too far (_he was still learning, wasn't he?_), but Sam would always come back whole, and it would start all over again. Abstractly, Dean knew that they couldn't be _all_ Sam, that maybe none of them were Sam at all, but after thirty years of a slow, slow death (_because of Sam_) he was perfectly fine with thinking they were. Hell, he _welcomed_ it.

_Dean, please man, come on, don't do this_.

That was—that was Sam's voice. But it _couldn't_ be—Dean had just made _sure_—

_Please, Dean. Not again. Just—please_.

The world whited out once again, but this time he didn't free-fall: anchored by the warm touch against his forehead and his chest, he was yanked unceremoniously back into reality. Sam's face was swimming above him, eyes wide and wild with an emotion that Dean had quite frankly forgotten his brother was capable of. "Dean," he said, voice rough and shaking, "Dean—thank god."

(_dean dean dean until his tongue got pulled out until he could die until he could start all over again until_)

Dean groaned, rolled over, and proceeded to throw up all over Sam's jeans.

* * *

><p>Sam figured that by this point he should've gotten used to Dean not trusting him with anything, but he couldn't deny that it still hurt. He knew he hadn't a right to expect anything from his brother, not now, but coming back that morning to Dean lying slumped against the bed, and being unable to wake him up for nearly an hour—Sam couldn't do this again, he <em>couldn't<em>. He hadn't fallen this far just to lose his brother all over again (_except he already had_).

Dean had woken up looking sick and shaken, but clammed up when Sam had tried to find out why. He'd insisted that they start on the hunt right away, started pulling out their supplies and whatever meagre research they'd done with a sort of manic ferocity that startled Sam. Upon later reflection, Sam supposed that it shouldn't have startled him: Dean only jumped into hunts like this to keep his mind off other things. Things he wasn't always inclined to share with Sam, even before he went to Hell and Sam popped the lid on the Apocalypse.

They were on their way to the coroner's office to have a look at the bodies that had been found. Dean was rigid as he drove, all straight back and clenched jaw and white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. The car was quiet—Sam had tried to shove in one of Dean's cassettes just to try and loosen Dean up but his brother had blanched and pulled the tape out almost as immediately—and it seemed like the silence was pressing down on Sam, twisting his bones and boxing him in and locking him in a cage where the air was thick with guilt and recrimination. He loosened his tie and collar and rested his throbbing head against the cool glass. He usually needed a few hours of sleep to recover from a demon-blood high; with Dean's insistence that they start on the job immediately, however, he just gritted his teeth against the slow-burning ache behind his eyes and the exhaustion that weighted his limbs, and kept going.

It was a small price to pay for keeping the voices in his head silent.

(_how long though sam how long how **long**_)

Once they got there Dean was out of the car even before Sam had gathered his wits enough to open the door and settle into being the bogus-authority-figure-of-the-day. FBI Agents Turner and Young it was, then, come to investigate the spate of mysterious murders, and yes, the investigation was at a dead-end, yes, they would bring in more manpower to do it thoroughly, and could they have a look at the bodies that had come in?

Then they were left alone with the corpses. Dean was all business as he snapped on a pair of latex gloves, tossed Sam another pair, and proceeded to examine. He hadn't said a word to Sam all morning nor did he look like he was going to even try for the rest of the day, so it surprised Sam when he suddenly said, "So you coming and having a look, or what?"

There was no real pattern among the victims—not age, gender, locality, religion or race. Whatever this monster was, it'd just randomly picked off people from the town, drained all of their blood, and torn off a limb or two for good measure. The corpses themselves were barely recognisable: hollowed-out and emaciated-looking, with glazed-over eyes, papery skin and grotesque stumps where an arm or leg used to be, looking as if the limb had not just been removed, but _gnawed_ off. Sam couldn't help but notice Dean grow paler and paler through the examination, swallowing convulsively as if he were trying to ward off round two of let's-upchuck-all-over-your-brother. Sam was nonplussed; this was far from the worst that they'd seen.

(_far from the worst things that they'd done_)

'Animal attack' seemed to be the prevailing theory—though there were no recent records of such violence from animals in the area, and the kicker: no bite marks anywhere on the bodies. And, of course, there was the—

"Absence of _hearts_?" Dean sputtered, staring at the report like he expected it jump up and start shouting answers. "What the hell takes out all the blood _and_ the heart from a mostly intact body?"

Sam shrugged helplessly. "Strange world," he muttered, frowning—there was something off about this situation that made him feel as if he should _know_—

"Whatever, man. I'm getting out of here." Dean peeled off his gloves. "Friggin' giving me the creeps."

It wasn't until they were in the car that Dean began talking again. "I'm guessing we're taking vampires off the list."

Sam leaned forward, dipped his face in his hands. God, his head was killing him. "Mutated super-vampire?" he suggested.

Dean snorted. "X-Vampire? That the best you can come up with?" He paused. "Wait, that actually sounds kind of cool. But keeping within the realms of _reality_—"

It was Sam's turn to laugh. "Reality's relative."

He could hear Dean's shrug. The pain in Sam's head spiked, and he just about bit back a groan. It was just the lack of sleep and the demon-blood fucking about with his metabolism, Sam supposed, but there was a peculiar slant to this pain that made him feel as if there was something else he was sensing, maybe something reaching out to _him_—for a bone-chilling moment he wondered if it were Lucifer, and if all his nightmares had come true: if he'd said yes without even realising it, if he was a passenger in his own body _right now_—

"Sam?" It was Dean, and there was a tinge of fear to his voice. "Sam, you okay?"

—and just like that, the pain was gone. Sam looked up and blinked, revelling in the sudden absence of the constant _throb-throb-hurt_, the feeling that somebody was trying to force white-hot needles through his eyes. He hadn't quite realised how the pain had punctuated his life the past few years, even when he was not tripping on demon-blood, until it was completely gone, and he was left giddy and light-headed in its wake. "Huh."

"_Huh_?" Dean raised an eyebrow. "Seriously, man, what's—" He shook his head, turned his attention back to the road. "You know what, forget it."

Sam sighed through pursed lips. He wasn't—he wasn't always sure how to approach things with Dean anymore, that feeling of walking on eggshells compounded by the clear, sure knowledge of _why_ Dean was so distant in the first place (_you're a monster_). "It was just—"

Something smashed into their windshield with an almighty _thump_ and a _squelch_.

"_Fuck_!" Dean swerved the car sharply, the tyres squealing across the asphalt. Sam braced himself against the door and the dashboard, gaping at the very dead man draped across the front of the car, blood spread around him like a sort of macabre halo. His mouth was gaping, eyes wide and glazed, as if he were just as surprised at being there as they were. Dean brought the car to a screeching halt by the side of the road, and the body slid down with a slow, slick sound like half a dozen slugs crawling across ground glass (_like coils of intestine across the front of their friggin **car**_).

Dean practically tumbled out of the car in his haste to get out. When Sam joined him, however, Dean wasn't even looking at the dead man on the Impala. He was staring out at the road in front of them—except, there wasn't a road anymore.

They were standing at the edge of utter devastation.

Smoke billowed into the air, heavy and rancid, out of what looked like a gigantic crater several miles wide. Most of the buildings were charred husks—several were still burning—and there hardly seemed anything left of the peaceful town they were just driving through. They seemed to have just caught the tail-end of the blast that ripped apart most of the town and come out completely unscathed, but there were several people around them who weren't quite as lucky—the ground was littered with pieces of building and vehicle and corpses riddled with shrapnel, many ripped apart so bad they were nothing more than messes of blood and body parts.

Sam coughed into his sleeve, his eyes watering. "What the hell, Dean?" They hadn't even _heard_ anything...

Dean didn't reply. When Sam squinted at his brother, he saw that Dean wasn't even _moving_, staring at the destruction, mouth opening and closing like he was trying to say something but couldn't quite find the words. Sam reached out, grabbed at his brother's sleeve. He had never seen Dean freeze in a crisis like this, but then again, _this_ pretty much blew _crisis_ out of the water and went straight up to _holy fuck this is bad_ levels.

(_You could say apocalyptic_, a sly voice in his head told him. Sam quashed it mercilessly.)

"Come on, man," he said, coughing harder. "_Dean_!"

Dean turned finally, and if he was affected by the smoke and the stench of death, he wasn't showing it. "You're not supposed to be here," he said, his voice low and strained. "You're not—" He choked, coughing harshly until he spit out a gob of sooty phlegm. "Only me, you hear me, you son of a bitch?" Dean yelled, spit still hanging off his lips. "_Only me_!"

Icy dread crawled its way up Sam's spine. "Dean, snap out of it!" he barked. "I need you here."

Dean blinked, eyes focussing on Sam, and then on a point over his shoulder, and they widened in horror. Sam turned to see the road they had just been driving on completely destroyed—scored with blast impacts, mangled metal skeletons of cars, and corpses, so many corpses—

(_and you will lead this army to its true destiny while humanity lies broken at your feet_)

His brother was swaying, breathing laboriously against the smoke, and Sam was beginning to feel light-headed as well. He didn't understand what had happened that made them slip from a world where everything was relatively peaceful one second to a world in the throes of some apocalyptic war the next, but he did know that he had to get Dean out of there, _now_.

Coughing again, he took off his jacket and braced his brother against his shoulder as Dean listed. He draped the jacket over their heads, hooked an arm around Dean's waist and managed to make it to the Impala. Black spots were already beginning to dance at the edges of his vision due to the lack of sufficient oxygen, but Sam pushed on (_because that's what he did, what he always did, what he always had to do_) and popped the trunk open. He grabbed the first weapons he could find—a rock-salt-loaded shotgun and Ruby's knife—to add to his and Dean's pistols.

It was with a sense of unease that he slammed the trunk and turned away from the Impala, but really, there was no way they were going to be able to drive the car through all the debris. Dean was now frighteningly limp, head lolling against Sam's shoulder, raspy breaths echoing in his ears, although Dean's feet still moved, his gait lopsided and shuffling. Sam swallowed down the panic and the confusion, locked them away in a little box along with every one of his monsters in the back of his mind, and struggled on with his brother by his side.

* * *

><p>Sam was fairly sure that at some point he had collapsed. One minute he was staggering, barely able to see, holding onto his brother just as much as Dean was holding onto him while every breath hurt like he was breathing fire, and the next he was waking up, the world nauseatingly out-of-focus. He blinked rapidly, trying to pull himself together. He was staring at a ceiling of watermarked concrete, lying on something decidedly uncomfortable. He could hear the quiet murmur of several voices in the background, and the smell of sweat and ammonia and gunpowder hung heavy in the air.<p>

He shifted, wincing as his chest ached and his throat burned like it'd been scraped with sandpaper. He pushed himself up on his arms, trying his damndest to suppress a coughing fit. He seemed to be in a basement of sorts, a long room made of windowless concrete. It was lit by gas lamps on hooks on the walls, and most of the activity seemed to be centred around a couple of tables at the far end of the room, where it looked like at least half a dozen people were gathered.

"Hey."

Sam jumped, his hand automatically going to the knife in his waistband. Except the knife wasn't there anymore, and it wasn't an enemy calling: it was Dean, sitting up beside him, looking about as crappy as he felt. Sam exhaled slowly, relaxed by degrees. It wasn't easy to put aside instincts grown from several months of hunting alone.

"What the hell's happening, man?" Dean whispered, slowly lifting himself to his feet.

"Your guess is as good as mine," Sam said, getting up as well.

To his surprise, Dean smiled, if sardonically. "Oh, I'll bet you anything that it's worse."

One of the people at the table turned abruptly in their direction. Sam looked around frantically for his weapons and felt a little gratified, if a little guilty, to see Dean hefting their shotgun. And to think that Dean had been the one barely on his feet just a few hours ago...

"It's okay," the man who'd turned around said, putting up his hands in a placating gesture. "We're fine. We're not fighting."

"Not yet, anyway," came another voice from behind him, low and sneering.

"We're _not_," said the man firmly. "We are not _them_, and we will never be." He approached them, hand outstretched. "I'm Steven Hudson, and this is our camp. I have to say, I thought the government had given up on trying to interfere in these things, so it's a pleasant surprise to see federal agents over here."

Neither Sam nor Dean moved or made to answer; the man's smile faded, but he didn't move his hand. "Let me tell you, you're in the right place. We haven't taken away your weapons; we haven't tried to harm you in any way—in these times, you can't expect a greater gesture of goodwill." He smiled again, twisted and bitter. "If we wanted to kill you, all we would've had to do was leave you out there. At _their_ mercy."

Dean exchanged a glance with Sam—_what the hell is he mouthing off about dude_ or _I take the blabbermouth and his bodyguard, you move in from the right_, Sam couldn't tell, he could never tell anymore—and spoke. "I'm sorry—okay," he said, lowering the shotgun. He shook Steven's hand briskly. "We're, uh, we're a little out-of-touch with events 'round here—because, y'know." He shrugged helplessly, and several of them nodded in understanding. "So, if you could run us through what's exactly been happening here—"

If any of them found the request odd, they didn't show it. Steven sighed, gestured toward the table. It was loaded with every weapon that Sam recognised from his trade: pistols and rifles and shotguns of varying calibre that looked like they'd been scavenged from many a battlefield; canisters of oil and crude home-made explosives; bags of salt and rosaries and holy water. What little space that was left was covered with maps criss-crossed by brightly coloured lines, with long-winding, hastily-scribbled keys in the corners.

"We know you guys aren't terribly fond of this explanation," Steven said, "but I'm pretty sure the government knows it just as well as we do. All of this started once the devil began to walk the earth."

* * *

><p>The devil had chosen his vessel, and his vessel had chosen him.<p>

It wasn't an event marked by great catastrophe; there was no great plague that swept the land, nor a chain of disasters that destroyed life as man knew it; there wasn't fire, or blood, or wastelands littered with corpses.

The Apocalypse started in the human heart.

It started with hate, with a feeling of territorial possessiveness so great that it fed itself, growing larger and stronger with every cycle of _anger-conflict-death-anger_. It started with arrogance, with a breakdown of every impulse that sustained the supremely gigantic and delicate web of human society.

It started with a parasite of the human soul, eating away until nobody would rest without seeing the other go down in a bloom of fire, and blood, and pain.

It started with one man in every dream. It started with this one man telling them that they are their own universe; that they _are_, and so shall it be for the rest of the world.

It started with this man-of-every-dream, and what he was before. It started with his love, his despair, his arrogance, his need, his hate, his vengeance. It started before he was born; it started, perhaps, with every step he took, every happiness he revelled in, every loss he endured.

It started because he _was_. Or perhaps he _was_ because of it.

It didn't matter.

The devil had chosen his vessel, his vessel had chosen him, and they were a perfect fit.

* * *

><p><em>It can't be<em>.

Sam felt like he was breathing through molasses, his vision tunnelling and his head spinning. Steven was talking about the devil (_him only him except it can't be IT CAN'T BE_) and wars and factions and endless conflict and he—he just _didn't understand_. He hadn't said yes—he could, he could, feel—shouldn't think about it, shouldn't think about him, except he _had_ to, now, right?—him in the back of his head, waiting, waiting, twisting and coiling like a snake waiting for one false movement from its prey—

"They're like cannibals out there," Steven said, shaking his head sanctimoniously. "It doesn't take much to trigger them, and then you have all of hell rising out of the woodwork along with them—"

"What do you mean?" Dean asked, leaning forward. He hadn't looked once toward Sam since Steven started talking; hadn't reacted in the least. Sam wasn't sure if that made him feel better or worse.

"_Monsters_," said Pam, a petite teenaged girl with wide blue eyes who'd introduced herself as Steven's sister, "Ghosts. Demons. It's like every badly made horror movie come to life out there."

"And you know how to fight these things because—"

"Hunters," Kyle said. He'd been fairly quiet through most of the explanation, either sneering or brooding, shaking his long greasy hair out of his face. "Crazy-as-shit assholes, but at least they knew what they were doing. They showed us how to kill these things."

Sam sat up, swallowed convulsively to regain composure. "Are any of the hunters here? Can we—"

"They're dead," Kyle said flatly. "As far as we know, anyway. We haven't had a lot of outside communication recently." He got up and casually picked up one of the guns from the table. "It's funny, though—you guys tell you know nothing about these things, yet you come with guns loaded with the _one_ sure-fire thing that works against all the fuglies out there: rock-salt." He lifted the gun, cocking it as he aimed it squarely at them. "The government collapsed _months_ ago. And you're coming _now_?"

Sam tensed while Dean lifted his shotgun again. Steven placed a hand on Kyle's arm and gently pushed it down. "They've been pretty harmless so far, Kyle. Besides, we can hardly _know_—"

"Exactly!" Kyle cried. "We don't _know_! For all we know, they could be spies from _them_! We haven't made it this far by being fucking _generous_ or winning Citizen of the Year awards, Steven."

"Then we descend to _their_ level—"

"Okay, _enough_!" Silence fell as Dean glared at each of them in turn. "You want the truth? Me and my brother here, we're hunters. We've been round the block more than a few times, and faced down every kind of nightmare-fuel out there. And barely an hour ago, we were driving through a normal, completely _intact_ town! So—how about some _real_ answers now, huh? What's going on, and who the hell are _they_?"

An uncomfortable silence fell on the room. Neither Kyle nor Dean seemed inclined to lower their weapons, and even Steven looked stunned speechless. It was Jade, the young woman who'd barely spoken a word so far, who broke it. "_They_ are everybody," she said, looking at her lap, fingering the silver ring on her right hand in quick, nervous movements. "Everybody else. All they want is death, and destruction. _Our_ deaths." She looked up and smiled weakly. "You saw what they've done out there. The air is so thick with death, nobody dares go above-ground anymore—unless they want to die, too. Unless they're willing to kill."

"_They_ were _your_ neighbours," Sam said. "Your friends, your—look, they can't have just turned that way overnight, all right?"

Kyle laughed. "A hunter, trying to condemn us for murder. Oh, that's _rich_."

"Don't test me," Dean snarled.

"You think we haven't heard things?" Kyle retorted. "They say this whole clusterfuck _started_ with a couple of hunters. That these hunters are responsible for freakin Armageddon bearing down on us! And you expect us to give a shit about _your _judgment?"

Sam's insides were twisted into a hot, heavy knot somewhere in the pit of his stomach. "You can't—it can't—that can't be true." He was aware how it sounded—like pathetic bleating, like weak denial—and he knew not a single person in the room believed it. He wasn't sure _he_ did.

(_i need to know i win otherwise—no no no NO_)

There was a frantic knocking at the lone door to the room, and everybody started. Kyle sighed, shook his head, and with one final glare at Dean, went to answer. He stepped over the salt line in front and carefully opened the door, his gun at the ready.

"It's Christian, and you need to let me in _now_!" came the muffled voice from behind the door. Kyle swung it open and a middle-aged man stumbled in, blond hair tousled and rumpled clothes spattered with blood. "They've—found us," he panted. "Porter's dead. We need to leave _now_."

There was a surprisingly organised scramble for the weapons. Everybody moved calmly, quickly, efficiently—all veterans of a never-ending battle. Steven tossed a pistol in Sam's direction. "Hope you guys can fight as well as you can talk," he said. "Because after this you're on your own."

They could hear the sounds of shouts and gunfire from above. Steven turned and smiled grimly at them. "Nothing for it, then."

He pushed open the doors, and they surged to the chaos above.

* * *

><p>For the first minute or two, Sam could barely see.<p>

The smoke and the stench stung his eyes, and he could hear Dean coughing harshly next to him. He held his knife protectively in front of him, covering his nose and mouth with the lapel of his jacket. Not that the knife was going to be much of a help against bullets through a smokescreen, but Sam lumbered on anyway. There was much noise and chaos around them: the sounds of guns and crazed voices and the dull thuds of flesh hitting tarmac. He concentrated on moving away from the noise; this wasn't their fight, and if Sam's guesses at what was going on held even a grain of truth, he'd make sure that it would never happen at all.

Then his eyes adjusted, he could see, and that was when he went completely blind.

There were shapes coming toward him, all shadow and blood and fire, and they were—demons. They were shapeshifters, eyes flashing white and skin peeling and nails growing into claws until they were werewolves, and then they weren't monsters at all; they were _the_ monster—they were (_him_), and Sam wasn't thinking anymore (_he couldn't afford to_). He pulled out the pistol from the waistband of his pants and began firing—although bullets were no good against his own fucked-up mind, Sam has tried, god knows he's _tried_—and how many ever times (_he_) went down in spatters of blood and bone, there was always more of (_him_), coming for Sam, slashing and cutting and firing and burning—

Abruptly, Sam felt somebody pull at his arm, and he struggled reflexively, twisting and slashing. But the grip was preternaturally strong; it pulled him away from the throng, and into an alley free of the smoke and the blood and (_him_), but Sam couldn't afford to relax, couldn't afford to _think_, couldn't, couldn't (_live_)—

"Sam."

The voice in his ear was soft and female and familiar, and the fog in his head cleared as abruptly as if someone had sucked it out by vacuum. He blinked, panting heavily, and almost immediately collapsed as his right leg refused to hold him up anymore. He leaned hard against the dirty brick wall, sliding down to the ground, writhing against the sudden agony that had erupted from the middle of his right leg and was sending shockwaves to the rest of his body. Gritting his teeth, he opened his eyes to see a knife buried up to the hilt in the meat of his thigh.

"_Such_ anger, such focus." He shifted his wavering gaze to see Jade crouched in front of him, arms folded across her knees, smiling. "Y'know, I can see why you were his favourite."

"J-Jade?" But of _course_ it wasn't Jade, it couldn't be, he was too familiar with that kind of smile, dripping smugness and the promise of a slow, painful death. The pain was scrambling his thoughts—and it wasn't just from the knife in his leg, but also from a dozen other minor wounds he didn't even remember getting—making him stupid, _slow_. "Christo."

Jade laughed. "Oops. Not quite." She got up, looked at him like he was some interesting new specimen in a biology lab. "I think the more interesting question here is: who are you, Sam?"

Sam shivered and tried to push himself into a more upright position. She hadn't reacted to _Christo_, but then again, the stronger ones rarely did. If only he could pull himself together long enough, he could try to exorcise her...

"I mean," she said cheerily, "it can't really be _you_, because right now? The man who was once called Sam Winchester? He's off doing things you couldn't even dream of."

Sam inhaled sharply. "I am _Sam_," he said, although he wasn't sure whom he was trying to convince.

"Oh, I know." She was crouching again, nuzzling her face against his. Sam grew rigid, tried to lean away as she took in a deep breath. "It's definitely you." Just as suddenly, her lips were on his in a quick kiss. "Hm, and not just _you_, either—_he_'s there, too. Dormant for now, but still." She drew back, her smile growing wider until it seemed like it was stretching from one end of Sam's contracting world to the other. "It's just a matter of time."

"This will _never_ happen."

"Oh, but it is _already happening_, Sam." She was back to playing with her ring while the world lurched nauseatingly around Sam. "You see this world around you? All this—wondrous destruction, all the meaningless deaths? That's all _you_, Sam. This is what you bring about. You summoned me and gave me the reins to six billion human minds that were already _itching_ to see each other burn in hell—and free them." She grinned. "I could kiss you, but—oh, wait. I guess I already did."

(_it always had to be you_)

Sam swallowed, trying to ground himself. He had to believe (_should believe, not think about him, push push push back_) that he was strong enough to stop this from happening. "Who are you?"

"War, the Horseman." She waved her hand carelessly. "Yeah, I know, I could be doing better things than hanging around in poor little Jade in this stupid podunk town, but once I sensed you? I _had_ to be here."

Sam's eyes widened. "Horseman... as in, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?"

Jade only smiled, raised her hand, and deliberately twisted the silver ring. "It was wonderful to meet you, Sam, but I've a job I need to do here." She nudged at the knife in his leg, and Sam screamed as his vision whited-out with the agony. When he could see again—and it could've been five minutes or five hours later, he had no fucking clue—Dean was gripping his jaw roughly, staring into his face with a sort of manic intensity that would've normally frightened Sam. All he could do now, however, was give a sort of pathetic whimper and bat weakly at Dean's hands, because _fuck_, it hurt!

"It's okay, Sam," Dean was saying. "We'll get it out, you hear me? We'll get it out. I'm going to fix this."

_What the—_ Sam's vision cleared completely just in time to see Dean's knife heading toward his face. He twisted away, shoving at Dean with all of his strength, and practically felt the blade miss him by centimetres. "Dean, stop, wait," he panted, backing away from his brother on his rear and his arms, his legs dragging uselessly in front of him. His pant leg was heavy with blood, and he was fairly sure the bleeding hadn't stopped. "Pl-please."

Dean only watched as he struggled, knife still raised, on his face that expression of resigned sadness, that quiet determination, that had haunted Sam's dreams for months. "It's okay, Sam," Dean said again, and this was exactly how Sam had imagined things would go, and such a large part of him wanted Dean to finish this and put the world out of so much imminent suffering, and maybe if he just stopped _here_, maybe if Dean just—

(_this is how you save me_)

—Jade was crying. Sam saw her over Dean's shoulder, just for a split second, face buried in her hands, the dim light glinting off the ring on her right hand—

—and Sam had made his decision. Barely biting back a scream of pain, he got to his feet, using the wall as support. The change in posture combined with the blood loss had everything dip and sway and black spots eating most of his vision, but he—_no_. He couldn't let it end this way.

Sam pushed past a startled Dean and staggered toward Jade. He grabbed her hand, and in a single movement, pulled the ring off her finger. The noise of gunfire and screams in the background quietened down before disappearing altogether, and Dean stared at Sam in utter confusion, with none of the damning resignation of just a minute ago.

"Sammy," he thought he heard Dean say, but by now the rush of blood in his ears was drowning out all other sound, and the black spots had consumed everything. He fell to a welcome darkness—

(_i promise_ _this will end_)

—the next thing Sam knew, he was waking up in the front seat of the Impala, blinking against the bright sunlight streaming in through the windshield. They were parked in the middle of a quiet suburban road, houses lining either side, and there was no evidence of the horrendous battlefield it had been minutes ago. Sam himself was intact—no injuries, no knife wound—and he turned to see Dean staring at him, looking about as dazed as he felt.

Sam felt a weight in his right hand, and he opened his fist to see a silver ring in the centre of his palm.

"Jade," Dean said hoarsely.

(_this is your world. the world you will create._)

Sam only closed his eyes.


	3. Part Three

**_Part Three_**

_It's a good dream, for once: he's in his old Stanford apartment and it's a quiet Sunday afternoon, bright sunshine spilling through the drapes, the soft whirr of the fan lulling him to sleep. The enticing smell of blueberry pancakes wafts through the air from the kitchen; Sam smiles, thinks about going in and maybe wrapping his arms around Jessica, breathing in her hair while eating crumbs off her fingers. He decides he'll stay where he is, though—relishing every moment of the memory. He's too afraid that the moment he gets up, he'll see nothing but Jessica pinned to the ceiling, burning, her eyes and mouth wide open as if in surprise at the violence and suddenness of the death that consumed her—_

_No. She's humming—some tune she probably heard on the radio that morning, that she claims she hates but can't get out of her head. Sam closes his eyes, breathes in deep, and prays that the moment will last as long as it can._

_"Such fantasies for a Winchester." The voice is male, dry, and strangely familiar._

_"Not here," Sam says, without opening his eyes. "Not now. I won't."_

_"Well, at least you've gotten yourself well-trained." There's a grunt and a thud, and when the voice starts up again, it sounds closer. "But, y'know, think about it. Would the bastard come to you as me? Oh, no—he'd be doing something like coming as your long-dead girlfriend, or your father, or something. Heaven always was full of drama queens."_

_Sam frowns. "No," he says._

_"Oh, for the love of—I'm sure your impression of a stubborn puppy is a riot at parties, Sam, but we don't exactly have the time for it now." Sam finds himself opening his eyes against his will, to see an all-too-familiar figure sitting on the desk in front of him. He tries to back away, startled, but finds that he cannot move—he's pinned to the chair by invisible restraints._

_"Hey there, Sam," the Trickster says, grinning. "Sorry about the whole bondage thing, but, totally honest intentions over here. We need to talk, and I need you to sit tight and not go T-1000 on me."_

_Sam stops his token struggle and settles for glaring at the demi-god. "Where are we?"_

_"In your head," the Trickster says. "Y'know, I've heard people say that their head is a scary place, but you, Sam? You've literally got Hell ready to break loose in here. But then again, you Winchesters always did tend to overkill." He sighs dramatically. "It was quite a struggle to find a place without Lucy looming in the background."_

_"It was you." The words are a struggle; Sam can't fucking deal with **this**, too, right now, he **can't**. "You sent us to that—that alternate future, or whatever."_

_"Bingo."_

_"Why?"_

_"For world peace and an X-box. Oh, and stopping the Apocalypse."_

_Sam can't help the frisson of hope breaking out in his chest. "What do you mean?"_

_"Godly privileges. I get to play around with time a bit—you got a sampling, remember." The Trickster's grin widens as Sam shudders at the memory. "Fun times, huh? The point is, Sam, every moment in history's got a million different outcomes. There are boatloads of universes out there that took root from these turning points—universes where some people never died, where some things that were never supposed to come about happen. What you're experiencing right now—what you call 'reality'? It's the most likely path out of several million."_

_"Sounds a little too X-Files," Sam says, but his mind is already racing. An infinite number of universes with infinite possibilities... perhaps, just **perhaps**—_

_"Yeah, well." The Trickster shrugs. "You've been living a horror B-movie your entire life; can't be too much of a leap." _

_"So—where you sent us, that was, that was a future where I say yes?"_

_"Among other things, yeah." The Trickster leans forward. "Okay, listen. This is important. There's a little secret about Lucifer's cage that I'm fairly sure that even he doesn't know. That ring you collected from War? There are three more, from the other three Horsemen. You put those four rings together, and you get yourself a do-it-yourself kit to opening the devil's cage."_

_Sam blinks. "The Cage? But—the seals—"_

_"—are already broken, blockhead." The Trickster rolls his eyes. "The Cage has a lock just waiting to be sprung. The thing is, though, it's got to be Lucifer that raises the Horsemen. But he can't do that while he's stuck in your head."_

_Not until Sam says _yes_. "So I go to the futures where he's... where he's already out, and I get the rings."_

_"That's right. Put them together and you've got yourself a key." He digs into his pocket, pulls out a Mars bar and begins unwrapping it. "What you do with that, however, is entirely up to you." He takes a large bite out of the bar._

_"Why are you doing this? Why do you want to help us?"_

_The Trickster grins around a mouthful of chocolate. "Honestly, Sam? It's been a fantastic few centuries. I mean, you guys—with all of your advancements and your delightful insistence on knowing and obsessing over exactly the things that aren't necessary... I've been having a ball. And now, to have a couple of bratty archangels ruin everything? That's just not done. I'm not alone, either—Heaven forgets so often that they aren't the only boys in the playground." _

_Sam narrows his eyes. "That still doesn't answer the question."_

_The Trickster swallows, gets down from the desk. "Why me? Why not? I'm closest to ground zero, after all. In this case—you two. Though let me tell ya, it hasn't been easy. I mean, remember Florida?" He gives a mock-shudder. "I can imagine Lucy's having a tough time stuck in here."_

_Sam closes his eyes, struggling with the overload of information. Or perhaps it isn't the information at all, but the memories (_one hundred tuesdays, one hundred and eighty-four days of a terrible, sordid hell_) and the little warning bells going off in the back of his head. He's already given too much to blind trust. Too much to his obsessions—to saving Dean, to killing Lillith, to his own attempt at redemption for the evil that flows through his veins. He's trusted demons, he's partaken in everything his family has ever stood against, he's got the devil inside his head, he's kick-started the goddamn end of the world. There isn't anything he's done that hasn't ended in disaster._

_And yet—_

_Dean's still there. Dean, and his disappointment that sometimes closes around Sam like an invisible vise, but he hasn't left. At every turn, he's refused to kill his brother, even at the behest of all of Heaven. _

_So maybe Sam doesn't quite have his brother's trust anymore, but he still has his brother. And because of that, he figures he should at least try. _

_"I can't keep this from him," he says. _

_"It won't matter, as long as you move fast enough." The Trickster cocks his head thoughtfully, then grins. "Go on, then. Go _Dungeons and Dragons _this thing."_

_The air around them shimmers, the smell of the pancakes and the sound of Jessica humming fading. They're replaced by the low thrum of an old air-conditioning unit, the smell of cigarette smoke and lemon floor-cleaner, and Sam—_

_"Wait," Sam says quickly (_desperately_). "How will we know next time? I mean—where do we go?"_

_The Trickster rubs his hands, flicks the wrapper into the dustbin. "Oh, I'll make sure you get where I need you to be. Those delightful little murders you came to investigate? My work. I couldn't decide between werewolf, vampire and chupacabra, so I went for a combination of all three. You like?" He laughs. "Thought it was pretty damn creative, myself."_

_Sam's gut clenches and his nostrils flare. "You killed all those people—just to **lure** us?"_

_For the first time, the Trickster's smile fades. "Maybe I've killed a lot more people for sillier reasons, Sam. Maybe **you'll** kill even more for even less. After all, you saw the sneak-peek preview just now."_

_"Don't screw this up," he says, and snaps his fingers._

_Sam wakes up._

* * *

><p>Dean was pouring himself a third glass of whiskey when Castiel showed up. Sam was out-cold on one of the beds—he hadn't spoken a word since they'd come back, only collapsed onto the bed like he hadn't slept in a week (<em>he hadn't slept in a week<em>)—and Dean... well, Dean was trying very hard to do nothing, like think about how he'd just very nearly killed Sam (_eyes pitch-black and mouth dripping demon-blood_) and how a small part of him, even now, wished that he'd gone through with it.

(_this is how you save me_)

Dean heard the gust of wind and the faint flutter of wings before he swung around, clutching Ruby's knife in one shaking hand. Angel or not, if that smarmy bastard Zachariah showed up again, god help him, he was going to stab him in the face.

It was only Castiel, however—standing in the centre of the room in all of his rumpled-trenchcoat-clad glory, with a faint look of consternation on his face. "Dean," he said without preamble, "where were you?"

Dean drained his glass in one gulp. "Oh, I'm sorry—you didn't get the memo in Heaven? You send us off to some kind of fucked-up parallel universe, and now you're coming and asking me where we _were_?"

Castiel frowned. "I don't understand," he said. "You and your brother disappeared from our watch a few hours ago—we weren't able to locate you anywhere on the planet, in Heaven or in Hell. We were... concerned."

Dean snorted. "Right. If it wasn't because of you guys, who else could have that kind of mojo?"

"There are—beings older and more powerful than angels," Castiel said slowly, "but they have no reason to interfere in this." In the blink of an eye, he was right in front of Dean, his hands on either side of Dean's head before Dean could really protest. He closed his eyes, brow furrowed in concentration. "This isn't possible—"

Dean shrugged out of Castiel's grip. "Yeah, well, it still happened. And just what is it with every supernatural creature out there trying to mind-rape us?"

"You need to be more careful, Dean," Castiel said. "You are vital to—"

"Vital to _what_?" Dean burst out. "You just _saw_ what I saw there. You can't tell me that me saying _yes_ to Michael and battling Lucifer won't end up killing everybody, anyway."

"It isn't about me telling you anything, Dean," Castiel said implacably. "This is about you accepting your responsibility as the one destined to end this." He narrowed his eyes. "_And it is written that the first seal shall break when a righteous man spills blood in Hell. As he breaks, so shall it break_. I know you remember what you did in Hell, Dean. I know—everything."

Dean turned away, clenching his jaw. "I started this. _All_ of this."

(_live, dean, he would say. and dean would not just live, he would rejoice. not just rejoice, but **revel**_)

"You are not being blamed, here," Castiel said, and his voice was lower, rougher than usual, "The righteous man who started this is also the one destined to end it. This is God's will."

Dean couldn't even really remember the moment he stopped being the one tortured, and became the one doing the torturing. He'd been so _eager_ to get off the rack (_to live, live, **live**_), so eager to throw away his last shreds of humanity—and now (_Sam_) the rest of the world was paying the price. What right did he have to berate Sam when he'd jump-started the process that his brother had ended?

"Well, then, He must be wrong," Dean said finally. "I can't. I'm not—"

"What we think doesn't matter. This is your responsibility, Dean, your god-given duty. I would suggest that you accept it before your brother breaks."

Dean opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything, Castiel was gone. And it wasn't like Dean could really _say_ anything, could he? From the moment Zachariah had rekindled the memories in his head, he'd known on some level that he was here, in some crazy way, to _atone_. Seeing the destruction and death when he and Sam had first landed in that alternate future, he could only think about the souls he had tortured and eviscerated in Hell, and about how all of it was—all of it—_all of it—_

(_and this? is what you're going to become!_)

"Dean?"

He started at Sam's voice. He was sitting at the foot of his bed, the half-empty bottle of whiskey dangling loosely from one hand, without even realising how he'd gotten there. Sam was sitting up on his own bed, staring at Dean like he'd just grown an extra head. "Dean," he said slowly, "you okay?"

Dean cleared his throat. "What? Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Absolutely." He got to his feet, and okay, the fact that his legs were shaking like a newborn animal's was not giving him any credibility, but screw it anyway. He was not in the mood for a macho stoic act.

"I've been calling you for the last five minutes," Sam said. "You didn't respond."

Dean set aside the alcohol carefully—he had a feeling he was going to need more of it soon—and rubbed his face. God, he needed a distraction. "I'm fine, okay, Sam? Look—can we just get back to this case, now? I'm thinking we should check out—"

"There's nothing to check out," Sam said. "There's no case here. I know what—who did this."

Dean stared at his brother. "_What_?"

Sam looked away, the muscles in his jaw working like they did whenever he was steeling himself to say something stupid (_terrifying_). "The Trickster," he said finally. "It was the Trickster that had us world-jump, too."

_The Trickster_. It did make sense, Dean supposed. After all, the bastard _did_ throw them into some sort of crazy time-loop parallel-future thing that messed up Sam for weeks afterward the last time they'd met him. It seemed like the kind of shit that the demi-god would pull. But— "Why? And how do you know it's him, anyway?"

Sam looked even more uncomfortable, if that were at all possible. "Because... he told me. In my dreams."

"Your dreams," Dean said flatly. "When did your head become a holiday home for the bored and the supernatural?"

Sam shook his head. "It was the Trickster, Dean. He was trying to contact me—_us_. And he—"

"How do you know it was _really _him, anyway?" Dean cut in. "How do you know it wasn't just—I don't know, the _devil_ trying to mess you up into saying yes?"

Sam looked pained, and god help them all, a little uncertain. "I would know," he said. "I _would_."

_Who're you trying to convince, Sammy? _"Fine," Dean said. "What does he want?"

"To help stop all of this. The Apocalypse. Everything." Sam was beginning to look earnest now, all wide-eyed and _Dean, you know what would be a great idea? Becoming an organ-harvesting zombie so that you can live forever_. And Dean would be damned if he was going to let that desperation of his brother's pull him into the dark any further.

"It's the goddamned _Trickster_, Sam," Dean said. "A murderer—a monster with mind-bending powers, who, by the way, doesn't exactly have a pleasant history with us."

Sam's lips pressed into a thin line. "Just—listen to me, okay? We aren't exactly making progress, here, dealing with this thing. And, I, uh." He cleared his throat. "I'm not sure how long I can keep—holding him back. So if the Trickster says he can help us, then maybe we should at least think about—"

"No, Sam." His brother was gearing up for another argument, and that was _it_. Dean had had enough. For too long he'd allowed things to go out of control, been to Hell and back, only to see his worst nightmare come to life. He just didn't see the point in fighting this thing anymore; not when everything that they did just made things infinitely worse (_not when the screams of the people he cut into are constantly eating at the edges of his mind_). "We are _not _working with him."

"You haven't even _listened_ to—"

"I don't think I need to, Sam!" Dean cried. "Remember the last time you decided to play along to the tune of some supernatural fugly? That worked out rather well, didn't it?"

Sam paled. "I'm not going to try and justify that. I know that I can't possibly—"

"Damn right you can't." Dean was vaguely aware that he was really letting himself go, but he figured that if they postponed this confrontation any more, he was going to implode. "You made a promise, Sam. You told me that the last goddamned thing you would do is run after that Ruby skank, and work on your powers! And now—I don't even know what you _are_, Sam." He turned away.

"I couldn't save you," Sam said thickly. "I had to do something—I had to _try_."

"And that somehow involved sucking down demon-blood?"

When there was no reply forthcoming, Dean turned to look at his brother. Sam was still staring at him, his eyes wet and his long throat working convulsively. "It made me—stronger, or at least that's what I thought," he said finally, his voice remarkably steady. "I could do more, I could... exorcise demons with my mind, without killing the victim. I could _see_, Dean, clearer than ever before—how they worked, how they organised themselves, how they _thought_, and I tracked down and killed more of those sons-of-bitches in that one year than we ever could, or did."

Dean thought he heard a note of quiet pride in Sam's voice, and it left him cold. "That still doesn't justify—"

"I _know_, alright?" Sam said. "I just—I figured I had nothing to lose, and I was saving lives, I was tracking down Lillith. Ruby showed me how, and—" Sam shook his head. "I was stupid to have trusted her, I realise that. But she's dead now, and I'm, uh. I'm trying, Dean. I'm trying to prove to you that I'm still _me_. That we can still beat this."

There was a strained silence after that, and Dean felt like he could break under the _I can't do this without you _implicit in every word that Sam had just told him. It should've felt like slipping into his skin: Dean, big brother extraordinaire, putting himself between Sam and the world. He'd fed off Sam needing him for years, but now?

Sam was supposed to have been _fine_. He was supposed to have kept hunting, kept going, kept living—that was the only thing that Dean had hoped for when he first made the deal. Except: Dean had gone, his brother had fallen (and Dean got _why_, he really did, and it only made him feel worse), and he had failed Sam on every level. Again.

"Dean." Sam's voice was hushed, but no less steady. "I know what happened to you in Hell. He... showed me, back when I was laid up in the Panic Room. It wasn't—Dean, I'm sorry."

Dean had lost count of how many times Sam had ended his sentences with an apology. He sighed, and felt the anger drain out of him, leaving him hollow and scraped raw. He sat down heavily on the opposite bed, and both of them stared at each other for a long minute.

Dean looked away first. "What's the Trickster's plan?" he asked.

Sam told him.

* * *

><p>A month later, there was a series of bizarre murders in Albany, Vermont.<p>

All of the victims were male, in their late thirties or early forties, all fairly successful businessmen. Their corpses were found naked, tied to trees just outside of their offices, throat and abdomen slashed, their intestines inexplicably missing.

That wasn't the most peculiar thing about the spree, however.

On each of their chests was carefully carved the following words:

_OVER HERE, YOU MORONS_.

* * *

><p>"So," Dean said as he drove, "he ganked a whole bunch of people and gave everybody else in town PTSD just so that he could leave us a calling card?"<p>

"Are you really surprised?" Sam shot back, raising his eyebrows. "This _is_ the Trickster we're talking about."

"Right." Dean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "You sure this isn't some, I don't know, psychopathic serial-killer? I mean, the last thing we want to be doing is running around waiting to be _Donnie Darko_-ed when there's actually nothing here."

Sam sighed. "Look, I get that this is a bit iffy. But until we have a better lead—"

"Fine, okay!" The last thing Dean wanted was Sam working his puppy-dog-eyes _I'm-being-understanding_ routine. "We'll check this out."

The last month had seen a sort of uncomfortable peace settle between them. Their impromptu heart-to-heart had given each other a lot to think about, or at least, Dean had been doing a lot of thinking, anyway. They'd holed up at Bobby's for a few days after the whole fiasco with War and had told him everything.

Bobby hadn't been surprised. _Ain't going to waste my time sitting around being shocked_, he'd said. _If his plan of the Trickster's seems legit, then you boys need to grab onto it. It's the Apocalypse: a lifeline's a lifeline_.

To be honest, Dean had expected the old man to put up something of a protest; the Trickster was one of the worst kinds of creatures to be making deals with (well, other than demons, anyway). That slippery son-of-a-bitch could be playing them for fools, watching them run around until they broke while he laughed and had chocolate-themed orgies, or whatever.

_You see any other way now, Dean?_ Bobby had asked him.

_No, but—_

_Then you need to trust your brother on this. God knows he can use it._

Dean _did_ know another way, however—he wasn't going to do it, he wasn't (_he wasn't_), but there were so many nights where the suggestion flitted in and around the edges of nightmares: _yes and it will end_—

Sam wasn't doing very well, either; apart from nightmares, there were times—getting disturbingly frequent as the days went by—when he would do his best impression of a human clam and keep to himself, staring at some distant point for hours on end. Dean didn't know what was happening with him—and he was a little afraid to ask—but he figured that maybe it had something to do with, oh, having Satan in his freakin head. Sam was breaking—_would_ break, Dean was sure of that, and when that happened, he would be forced to play the one hand he had.

(_it's that simple_)

There was nothing quite as dramatic as half-eviscerated corpses flying through the air and surprise-blast-craters as Dean drove warily into town; soon they had holed up in a motel for the night. Sam had gone increasingly quiet as the hours lurched by, and Dean was already dreading the prospect of having to spend hours in a cramped motel room with an unresponsive brother, waiting with his thumbs up his ass for some demi-god to throw some weird sci-fi shit at them.

He'd seen a bar just a couple of blocks before the motel; suddenly the thought of a milling impersonal crowd and plenty of alcohol seemed like the most attractive thing in the world. He felt a twinge of guilt at leaving Sam alone in the state he was in, but then again, he'd only be away for a couple of hours, and besides, they were running low on funds as well.

Dean carefully salted the windows and door, drew a crude Devil's Trap on the ceiling over their beds—Sam usually got that job, being the overgrown giant that he was—and left a couple of flasks of holy water in easy reach. He paused at the doorway in one final moment of guilt, but the need to get away from the claustrophobia that was spending time alone with his thoughts was too strong. Carefully closing the door to preserve the salt line, he didn't waste time getting the Impala; he jogged out into the cool, crisp night air. He felt better already: hell, he was _hungry_. Felt like he could eat a whole stable, which, hey, awesome, because he hadn't had much of an appetite for anything for weeks now.

One of the first things he noticed as he entered _Swindon's_ was the silence.

The second, perhaps more important thing that he noticed was the several bloody corpses draped over the tables, bottles knocked askew, shattered glass littering the floor.

_What the everloving—_ Dean tensed, pulled out the gun from the waistband of his pants and slowly made his way through the destruction. The glass crunched beneath his boots, the sound echoing painfully loud in the silence. His skin prickled with the cold, gut twisted into knots.

"God... please... I want—_I want_—"

It was faint, barely more than a whimper, but it cut through the quiet like a gunshot. Dean swivelled in the direction of the voice, his grip on the gun tightening. "Hey," he called out. "Hey! Who's there?"

There was a small sob, then the distinct sounds of liquid pouring and a bottle rolling across the floor. "I _need_ to," the voice said, "but I can't. It hurts—oh, god, it _hurts_!"

"Hang in there," Dean said. "I'm here to help." The voice was coming from behind the bar counter. Dean leaned over the counter to see the owner of the voice sprawled on the floor, loosely holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand. He was staring at nothing, eyes bloodshot and glazed-over, and he was _covered_ in blood: it ran in rivulets from the corners of his lips, from his nose and from over a dozen deep cuts over his face. His clothes were shredded and soaked with what seemed like an impossible amount of blood; when Dean looked a little to the side, he saw what looked like the bartender lying face-down, the broken half of a beer bottle protruding from the back of his neck.

Dean swallowed against the nausea, and spoke. "Hey—hey! You with me, here?"

The man's head bobbed unsteadily, but at least he seemed responsive: with some effort, he managed to focus on Dean. "Please," he whispered.

Dean vaulted over the counter, landing gingerly next to the dead bartender. "Hey," he said, crouching in front of the injured man, "everything's going to be okay, but you've got to tell me what happened here."

The man blinked blearily. "I'm so thirsty," he said. "_Please_."

Before Dean could so much as respond, the man took a large swig of the whiskey in his hand. He started coughing immediately, choking as blood bubbled from between his lips. To Dean's horror, he continued to drink, swallowing the blood and the alcohol even as he twitched and convulsed, more blood leaking from his ears and eyes and—

He wouldn't _stop_ _drinking_.

Dean grabbed the bottle out of his hands, but the man reached blindly for it, apparently not bothered by the fact that it was making him gush blood like he was friggin chugging sulphuric acid. When Dean only moved the bottle further away—"Hey, now, that's _enough_!"—the man pulled the broken bottle out of the bartender's neck with surprising strength and started swinging at Dean wildly.

"The _hell_?" Dean jumped back, bringing up his gun. He'd barely thought _psycho-zombie with alcoholism?_ when the bar lights glinted off an all-too-familiar silver ring on the man's right hand.

_Well, shit_.

Dean shot once, twice, thrice. The man went down with one last choked gurgle, and lay still. Dean stood there, panting, reeling from the all-pervasive reek of alcohol and blood.

So, this was how it went, then? He'd just—pick up that ring, and when he turned around, the bar would be 99% more corpse-free? This Horseman had seemed a little _too_ easy to put down, but then again, Dean wasn't about to look a gift horse—or, uh, Horseman in this case—in the mouth.

The ring wasn't there.

The man wasn't wearing anything at all on his hands—but Dean had been so _sure_ that he'd seen the ring, so _sure_ that it had been—

Dean felt bile rise at the back of his throat. He'd just shot down some poor bastard in desperate need of help. He'd probably just hallucinated the ring; maybe this wasn't some crazy demi-god generated alternate future at all, maybe—

(_this is exactly what he's always wanted_)

The doors to the bar opened suddenly, and a large man barrelled in, heading straight for Dean with a wordless cry. Without thinking, Dean turned and shot him in the head.

This man had barely finished dying when he was followed by another, then another. Dean kept shooting until he lost count of how many he'd killed, and when the bullets ran out, he merely picked up a couple of the broken bottles that littered the floor.

The blood flowed.

* * *

><p>Sam was thirsty when he woke up.<p>

He blinked at the ceiling, watching as a hastily-drawn Devil's Trap came slowly into focus. He was in bed without even realising how or when he got there: a scenario that was becoming all-too-frequent these days. He knew that Dean was scared about how often he was spacing out—couldn't blame him, Sam was terrified himself—but Sam didn't quite know how to explain it to his brother: that pressure in the back of his mind; the exertion that went into picking and choosing his thoughts so Sam couldn't hear (_him_), not really; the toll that the exertion was taking on his body. Of course, upping his demon-blood regimen would make things a lot easier, but—no. Sam was trying not to think about that.

God, he was thirsty.

"Dean?" he called out, wincing as his voice scraped against the inside of his throat like sandpaper. "Dean, you there?"

Usually Dean would be nearby when Sam woke up this way—disoriented and exhausted beyond all belief. It helped ground Sam, and a large part of him was grateful that, despite everything that was going on between them, some things about Dean never changed.

Dean wasn't answering this time, though.

Sam got up and swung his legs off the bed. Dean wasn't in the room, the bathroom lights were off, and Sam was not panicking that Dean had left him, he was _not_. Judging from the salt lines and the Devil's Trap and their half-unpacked duffels, however, it looked like Dean had just gone out for a bite to eat, maybe a drink. Sam shook his head—_buck up, Winchester_—trudged into the bathroom and poured himself a glass of water.

The water burned his throat like liquid fire.

Sam coughed and hacked and spit out the rest of the water, watching as it came out red-tinged. His gut clenched with an old fear—all those times with the demon-blood and Ruby and exorcisms and brain-crushing migraines and all the blood—but it couldn't be, he hadn't had demon-blood in weeks, and hadn't performed an exorcism for even longer.

He was so _goddamned thirsty_—

Sam spotted the holy water flasks on the table; within seconds he was chugging from one of them, only to spit it out almost immediately as his tongue literally _sizzled_. He tried the whiskey, Gatorade, even the three-day-old half-empty bottle of Coke at the bottom of his backpack. Everything had the same result, and Sam slumped at the foot of the bed, his head spinning, his throat on fire, tasting copper and feeling like his mouth was covered in blisters.

(_this isn't even the worst of it_)

Something was—something was terribly, terribly wrong, except Sam could hardly _think_, leave alone try and figure it out. He had to get to—he had to get to Dean. That was it. Dean could do something—

(_but he can't give you what you **need**_)

A vicious cramp in his gut nearly bent him in two as he tried to get up; he knew he wasn't going to make it to the door, leave alone search for his brother.

(what you _can_ do, ruby used to tell him, is this. and she would tear a long beautiful line down her forearm with the knife, and sam wouldn't even wait for the blood to well to the surface; he would suck it out, relishing every drop of that strength, that power.)

Sam stared at his own arm, the faint blue patterns of veins just underneath the skin. Suddenly, he knew what he had to do.

(this was how sam would save the world.)

Sam picked up his knife and cut carefully across his wrist—just enough pressure for the blood to flow freely, not enough that he was in danger of bleeding out. He lowered his mouth to the wound and began to suck, and suddenly the thirst was quenched: blood and pain and power was what it wanted now, and that was exactly what Sam was giving.

(this was how sam would save his brother.)

* * *

><p>Sam wasn't entirely sure how he'd made it outside, what with his wrists bleeding freely and the world lurching and shifting nauseatingly around him; but he figured it didn't matter, anyway. The thirst was all-consuming now, and sucking in his own blood just wasn't enough. He needed to—<em>he needed—<em>

He could just barely register the people on the street as he staggered on; some were already dead, others were dying: trying desperately to eat and drink although every morsel and every drop meant excruciating pain. There was great hunger despite the plenty; _water, water, everywhere, but not a drop that doesn't taste like acid_, Sam thought, and he wanted to laugh and laugh—

"Sam."

Somebody gripped him from behind, held a cold knife-blade to his throat. "Dean," Sam forced out through his half-destroyed mouth, the word coming out painful and mangled. "Dean."

"Well, yes, Dean," he said softly in Sam's ear, "but, y'see—not really."

Sam glanced down at the hand gripping the knife, focussing with difficulty, and saw the silver ring on Dean's fourth finger—except Dean never wore that ring after he came back from Hell; it was probably still in his original grave. "Famine," Sam whispered.

Dean laughed softly. "Sam Winchester," he said. "The boy who made all of this possible."

"Let Dean go," Sam wheezed.

"And why should I? Your brother's appetite for death is _magnificent_. A century spent killing... you can't expect that to just fade away, now. The line of bodies behind me? All your brother's handiwork, Sam."

(_a century spent killing **you**_)

"That may be," Sam said. "But I'm not far behind."

He elbowed Dean in the gut, took advantage of the momentary surprise to slip out of his grip and force the knife out of his hand. He whirled around, slammed Dean against a wall.

Dean only smiled. "It's been an honour, Sam," he said.

Sam thought he could feel his blood boiling under his skin; neither of them could take this any longer. He raised the knife and plunged it into the base of Dean's ring finger until he felt the tip hit the wall.

The world shattered and dissolved to the sounds of Dean's screams, and Sam knew no more.


	4. Part Four

**_Part Four_**

Dean woke up in a hospital.

In a waiting room, to be more specific; he was wedged into an uncomfortable plastic chair, surrounded by people in varying degrees of sickness. The air was heavy with the smells of spirit, antiseptic, and the fainter ones of vomit and ammonia. It'd been a while since Dean had been in a hospital, much longer since he or Sam had been laid up in one—

_Sam_.

Dean started as memory crashed back into him like a tidal wave. He looked at his hands—there was no ring, and all of his fingers were intact. He wasn't covered in what had seemed like gallons of blood from the arterial sprays of over a couple dozen bodies. This was probably around the time that he started wondering if the whole thing hadn't been some kind of exceptionally weird nightmare, a fever dream brought on by spoiled bacon sandwiches and too much whiskey.

It had been too clear, too vivid to be just a dream, though. He remembered every detail—every nauseating, gory (_glorious_) drop of blood. He didn't even have the excuse of being blinded by some unbelievably powerful urge: there had been no red haze, no black-outs; only a deep, cold clarity, and a sense of—of _freedom_.

(_this is how you **live**_)

Famine had feasted on that, and he'd let it. Right up until Sam—

(_bloody and half-dead speaking through a mouth full of horrific blisters_)

-dammit. He needed to focus on more important things right now. Like the fact that he was in a hospital without knowing how he got there, and that his brother was nowhere to be found. Were they back in the real world, now? Judging by his general appearance and a distinct lack of amputated fingers, they had to be. Which only kicked up Dean's anxiety that he was in a hospital with a missing brother by a couple hundred notches.

He got out of the chair and looked around—and noticed for the first time that the waiting room was unusually full. Hell, _full_ wasn't even doing it justice—every single chair had been taken, and there were several others squatting on the floor, coughing or staring into space or vomiting into paper bags or lying curled up, shaking and crying. Large portions of the corridor were taken up by patients lying on makeshift mattresses made of folded bedsheets, complete with IV stand by the side. Occasionally a few haggard looking nurses would come to check on them, or call inside some of those who were waiting. The air was thick with a cacophony of sickness.

Dean blinked, feeling dizzy. This couldn't be the real—where was—_where was Sam in all of this_—

"Dean."

He gave an embarrassing yelp at the voice right behind him and whirled around. "Sam!"

His brother looked terrible: pale and sweaty, with bloodshot eyes and spots of colour high on his cheeks. He was listing slightly as he stood, blinking rapidly like it was taking effort just to focus at all, but he gave Dean a big, watery smile. "Thank god," he said. "It took me quite a while to find you, y'know."

Dean sighed, took another look around him. "I'm guessing we're not back in Kansas, yet."

"No." Sam's smile faded, and now he just looked... beat-down. Exhausted. "It looks like this is Pestilence."

"Great." Dean scrubbed his face with his hands, ran them through his hair. "No downtime this time?"

"I guess not. Besides, I don't think we can afford the rest right now."

Maybe not. But Dean knew that they both _needed _it, desperately. "So, what's the plan? How do we know who it is that we need to flick the ring from?"

Sam took a deep breath. "I don't know."

The man sitting beside them commenced a painful-sounding coughing fit, which soon devolved into retching. He spat bloody bile onto the floor, practically whimpering with every cramp. The patients around him didn't react: just moved away from the radius of impact, each cocooned in their own misery. Dean's stomach turned. "We need to end this now," he said.

Sam nodded. They made their way out of the waiting area, stepping carefully, as they made their way to... well, Dean wasn't exactly sure _what_, but he knew it was better that they kept moving. He could already feel a dull ache behind his eyes and his throat hurt, and he was afraid that if they stopped for even a moment to catch their breath and reconsider their options, they would never get moving again.

Sam was stumbling more often than not, now—his answers to Dean's questions were starting to become increasingly garbled and nonsensical, and when Sam finally listed against the wall and began to slide down, Dean threw his brother's arm over his shoulder and forced him upright. Heat was pouring off Sam like he was a giant radiator, and Dean felt his insides twist with fear. "Come on, man," he grunted, shaking Sam slightly, "don't check out on me now. I'm pretty sure I can't carry your gigantor ass around."

Sam seemed to regain some level of awareness at that. He coughed, then spoke quietly, "Not your fault."

Dean froze. "What?"

"Famine," Sam clarified. "Hell."

It was just like Sam to want to have a heart-to-heart in the middle of fighting for their goddamn lives. Dean didn't know if that made him feel better or worse. "How about we discuss this later, huh? When we're not at ground zero of the Apocalypse?" He tugged Sam down another corridor. It was slow progress, but at least they were moving.

"It doesn't," Sam said at length, "It doesn't change what you are."

Dean shook his head. "And what's that?"

Sam smiled. He was _so_ out of it. "My big brother," he said.

The corner of Dean's lips lifted almost involuntarily. God, he was turning into such a _sap_.

"What're you two doing here?"

Dean looked up to see one of the doctors standing before them. Or was it two? He wasn't entirely sure; suddenly, he felt infinitely worse, and couldn't really focus on anything—

Sam slipped from his grip, fell and lay on the floor, unmoving. Dean suspected he wasn't far away from following him; his head was pounding, and felt like it would pop off and float away at the slightest movement. The doctor caught hold of him as Dean began to topple.

"Really," the doctor said, "you aren't meant to be here. There is a world out there you're meant to be destroying—oh, right about now."

Dean shifted his head, ignoring the starbursts of pain behind his eyes, and saw the ring in one of the hands fisted in the collar of his jacket.

_Bingo_.

"But then again," the pseudo-doctor said, "you aren't really from around here, are you?"

He dropped Dean to the floor, where he promptly started coughing like he was hacking up a lung. He curled around himself, didn't stop until he could taste blood. He heard the doctor speak, as though from very far away. "Do you know that nobody has a name for what you're suffering from right now? This virus is a couple of centuries early to the party, but, hey. The world's ending, anyway."

Dean tried to move, to get up and get that goddamned ring, but he could hardly turn his head.

_Can't end this way..._

He detected sudden movement from the corner of his eye: somehow, miraculously even, Sam had managed to move and throw himself at the doctor's legs, tackling him and knocking him over. The doctor's skull cracked audibly against the floor, and as he lay there dazed, Dean summoned the strength he wasn't aware he had and crawled over. The world around him was full of colours and crazy patterns like he was looking through some giant, broken kaleidoscope, and he felt bile rise at the back of his throat.

The doctor was already beginning to move; Dean didn't have much time. He groped around in the general direction of the doctor's right hand until he managed to find it. He yanked on the ring, panicking when it seemed like his weak efforts were not going to get it off in time, until, with one final pull, it slid off smoothly.

Dean dropped his head to the floor in relief, and when he looked up again, he was in their motel room. Sam was sleeping soundly on one of the beds. Dean thought about making the journey to his own bed, but figured the effort wasn't worth it; he arranged his jacket as a makeshift pillow on the carpet and was asleep the moment he closed his eyes.

* * *

><p>Sam was still sleeping when Zachariah showed up twelve hours later.<p>

Dean had barely registered the angel's presence in the room before he found himself slammed against the wall, held in place by invisible restraints. Zachariah seemed furious; his eyes were literally glowing with an ethereal light, and Dean had a sudden, almost irrational fear that he was going to explode, and take half the town with him.

"Y'know," the angel said, "I'm _really_ starting to lose my patience with you two."

Dean smirked. "Careful," he said, "Your temper tantrum might wake Sam."

Zachariah narrowed his eyes. "Keep up the sass, and I'll make sure he _never_ wakes up. You think this is some sort of _game_, Dean? Millennia were spent planning this exact moment. Perhaps from the very beginning of creation itself. And now—you really think I'm going to let you two chuckleheads and your pet demi-god ruin it all?"

"There's no question of you _letting_ us do anything," Dean said. "Considering we're already doing it, whether you like it or not."

Zachariah shook his head. "Never should've left Castiel in charge of you. He's been too soft."

Dean felt the pressure on him increase, slowly but inexorably pushing him back against the plaster. "We end this now," Zachariah said quietly. "What you're doing? It's ultimately useless, because what use is an empty cage? Lucifer's still in your brother. Sam's but human. Whatever he may claim, he can't fight against an archangel taking residence in his head.

"And so we come to _you_, Dean. Tagging along because you have no choice, not believing in your brother, but not quite believing in yourself, either. Do you have any idea how _pathetic_ you look?" The pressure was starting to get painful now, and Dean gritted his teeth. "Man up and accept your responsibility, Dean!"

(_because_ _you're my big brother_)

"No," Dean said, and he wasn't quite up to figuring out the _why_s and _how_s of his decision, but he knew he would stand by it, whatever crap Heaven may throw at him.

"Then perhaps you need to be told in a more _effective_ manner," Zachariah said, and to Dean's terror, turned to Sam. Before he could do anything, however, there was another presence in the room—a tall, thin man, dressed in black formals, a silver cane in one hand. He ignored a dumbstruck Zachariah and walked straight up to Dean, who slumped to the floor as he was abruptly released from Zachariah's bonds.

"Dean Winchester," the man said, "We need to talk."

"You _can't_ be here!" Zachariah forced out.

The new entrant cast a bored look behind him, as if he'd just realised Zachariah's presence. "If you will give us some privacy," he said, and gestured with one hand. Zachariah grew rigid, glowing intermittently from within like a human-shaped Chinese lantern. He finally collapsed, eyes still wide and fixed on some distant point, the impression of two gigantic charcoal-black wings sprouting from either side of his body.

"Thank you," the man said pleasantly, and turned back to Dean. "Now—Dean. I trust you have met my three... associates, so we can dispense with the introductions and get straight to business."

Dean scrambled to his feet, casting a furtive look at Zachariah's corpse. "Death," he said.

"Yes."

Dean opened his mouth to say more, but Death cut him to the chase. "No, this is not an alternate future, nor is this some kind of virtual construct; this is reality, Dean, here and now—where I couldn't help but notice that you've got the rings of three Horsemen."

Dean reached for the knife in his waistband, ready to fight if he had to. Of course, not that he had a chance against something that just killed an angel like it was brushing an insect off its shoulder.

"I'm not here to fight you, Dean," the Horseman said, rolling his eyes. "You are missing the one final component in the key that will open Lucifer's cage. I can give it to you."

Dean blinked at him. "You're just—going to _give _us the ring? Just like that?"

Death raised his eyebrows. "Should I apologise for not slotting into your narrow world-view, Dean? Perhaps I do not care to be bound to the wishes of a former archangel. Perhaps I do not wish to be part of some cosmic family feud; perhaps there are powers in the universe more numerous than Heaven will ever know, and greater purposes to aspire to."

"Okay, then." Dean wondered if he should be feeling lucky that there were so many supernatural beings lining up to toss them a few freebies so that they could stop the Apocalypse. But then again—"There's a catch, though."

"I do have one condition, of course: that you make use of this opportunity and actually imprison Lucifer, no matter the personal losses you may incur. And if this means your brother jumping into the Pit with the devil locked inside his head, then so be it."

Dean's mind instantly rejected the idea; after all, he'd spent the last several months swearing that the last thing he'd do was kill his brother. He hadn't come back from more than a century in Hell just to send Sam down there. "There's got to be another way to put Lucifer back in there—"

Death sighed. "Denial—I was wondering when we were going to get there. Do you understand that your brother is already dead, Dean? He died the moment he broke the final seal and let Lucifer in. There are precious few strands holding his mind together right now, and they are fraying as we speak." He removed the ring from his finger and held it out in the palm of one hand. "Opportunity—and death—only knocks at your door once."

Dean looked from the ring to his brother—the choice between ending the world and ending his brother would've been frighteningly easy to make a few years ago: Sammy trumped everything else, always. Dean had lived by that simple truth for most of his life. Now, though—everything had changed for good, and Sam was suddenly a lot more complex than just the little brother that Dean needed to protect.

Or maybe Sam had been that all along, and Dean had only now become the big brother who'd realised that he couldn't protect Sam from everything.

"I'm—we're ready for whatever may happen," Dean said. _For whatever Sam decides to do_. "But it will end with Lucifer back to rotting in his cage." Dean held his hand out.

"You've given your word, Dean—I trust you are bright enough to know that breaking a promise to me will have dire consequences." He dropped the ring in Dean's upturned palm. "I am going to tell you the final incantation to opening Lucifer's cage. I will say this only once, so listen carefully."

Sam slept on.

* * *

><p>"How're you holding up?"<p>

Sam squinted up at his brother from where he was settled on Bobby's couch, barely suppressing a yawn. He couldn't remember a moment in the last couple of weeks when he wasn't exhausted to the point of collapse; he spent hours fighting vicious migraines when it seemed like his brain was straining to break out of his skull and was leaking out through his ears instead, and the rest of the time trying to recover from them. He was constantly caught between having too little sleep and too much of it, and when he _was_ asleep? (_He_) would be there, lurking.

(_He_) wouldn't even say anything. (_He_) would just sit there and smile (_his_) smug, infuriating smile, as if (_he_) was so sure of Sam breaking that (_he_) wasn't even trying anymore. Just waiting.

(_we will achieve so much, you and i_)

"Okay, considering," Sam croaked. He unfolded himself and got unsteadily to his feet. It'd been a while since Death had spoken to them, since they'd finally completed the key. The thing was, they weren't quite sure what to do next: Lucifer's cage could not be opened just anywhere; they'd retired to Bobby's to figure out where. Unfortunately, Sam's health had deteriorated drastically as they waited, and the passing of every day, every hour felt charged with a vague anxiety, the feeling that the entire damn sky would fall on them when they weren't looking.

Sam wasn't sure how much longer he'd last; he hadn't told Dean yet, wasn't sure how he could put in words even if he did want to tell him, but there were moments when Sam would wake up not quite able to tell where he was or even _what_ he was. His body would twitch of its own accord and Sam would experience a moment of crushing claustrophobia where he felt like he was a passenger trapped in his own body—

Sam knew he had to move fast. If he really was going to—if he was going to jump into the box with the devil trapped in his head—there wasn't—time—there was there _was_—

(_but sammy, i **am** impressed_)

A sharp white pain shot through his brain, blinding him momentarily. Dean caught him before he fell, murmuring words in his ear that Sam was barely able to hear through the rush of blood and

(_i **know**_ _sam what you're doing i know I KNOW and i do not **care**_)

and Sam stumbled out of Dean's grip, feeling like his skin was crawling and every one of his nerves were misfiring, because this—this _pain_, it didn't feel like his brain was trying to claw its way out of his skull, but like something alien trying to claw its way out of _him_—

(_because i am you already_)

—the pain disappeared just as abruptly, and Sam was left panting in its wake, blinking tears out of his eyes. He was on his hands and knees, and Dean was crouching before him, his voice delivering a constant litany of _hey, hey, Sammy, it's gonna be okay, man, c'mon_.

He got drunkenly to his feet, closing his eyes because it literally hurt to see—everything he saw was chased by bright halos that stayed with him even behind closed eyelids. Dean put an arm around his shoulders and began to guide him back to the couch.

Sam shuffled along as best as he could, until he hit what felt like a brick wall.

He snapped open his eyes to see a very bewildered Dean in front of him, trying to pull him forward. But Sam couldn't move—as if there literally _was_ some kind of invisible wall separating him from Dean. He spread his hands across it, finding it cool and vaguely uncomfortable, like there were little arcs of electricity that jumped between the pads of his fingers and the wall. He turned and felt the same obstruction after a couple of steps; he traced the wall with the tips of his fingers until it was clear that he was hemmed into a circle.

His gut clenching with a half-formed fear, Sam looked up, as did Dean.

There was a Devil's Trap painted on the ceiling right above Sam.

* * *

><p>Sam eventually found the correct location.<p>

It had taken days—days in which Sam became less and less coherent, days in which (_his_) voice would fill Sam's head until all possibility of thought were drowned, days in which his skin burned at the touch of holy water, and he bled from his ears and nose and mouth—before Sam did it. He wouldn't ever be able to tell why, or how, but Dean told him later that he'd just taken one of Bobby's maps, and marked a location just a few miles east of Indian Hills, Nevada.

_Your eyes were black, Sammy_, Dean told him, with a sort of resigned wariness. Dean looked so tired; Sam knew that it went against every instinct that Dean had to keep this going. He thought he could actually see Dean stretched thin over all of this; wondered if the veneer was stretched for long enough, the Dean that spent a century in Hell would break through. Wondered if that Dean, with all of his anger and hate and his own perverse brand of love, would finally be able to put Sam down—

(_you needn't fight anymore, sammy_)

"That was Lucifer," Sam said quietly. "He's thrown us a challenge." He laughed, maybe a little affectionately—(_he_) might've been a tumour, a disease in Sam's head, but (_he_) was still a part of Sam. He thought he might actually feel a little empty without (_him_).

(_such a perfect fit, you and i_)

Bobby seemed thoroughly unnerved, but also resigned—they really didn't have much time left. The day they left, Bobby pulled him into an embrace and told him, "I'll be praying for you boys," and Sam thought it was a strange thing for him to say. But then again, when Sam had first come to him after a year of being incognito, suffering from demon-blood withdrawal and carrying Lucifer in his head and bringing a whole host of problems that Bobby didn't deserve to be burdened with—Bobby had taken him in, and given him unflinching support. Perhaps faith—faith in a man destined to bring about the end of the world, in a man who'd proved over and over again that he didn't deserve it—had more to do with it than Sam had thought.

"Thanks, Bobby," Sam said, and hugged him back.

They were on the road after that—a familiar progression of long, uncomfortable silences interrupted by the occasional stop for gas and food. Sam slept through most of it; he hadn't the energy to try and deal with the silence and Dean's fears, not when (_he_) was slithering in and out of Sam's dreams and every waking moment.

(_you're just delaying the inevitable_)

Perhaps he was.

(_don't worry, sam. you don't have to carry this terrible burden anymore. you can sleep, now._)

Sam woke up to the screeching of tyres and Dean's loud cursing. He snapped open his eyes just in time to stop himself from crashing into the dashboard as the Impala made a sharp turn, coming to a stop with the car parked haphazardly across the road. "_Fucking_ son of a—" Dean's curse was bit off as he got out of the car and slammed the door behind him. Sam followed him out to see what was blocking their way.

It was an enormous column of swirling black smoke, reaching up as far into the sky as Sam could see, and beyond. Little sparks of lightning were shooting along its length, and Sam—

—could hear their screams, could hear a hundred million voices rising in unison, baying for _HIS ARRIVAL, HIS MAGNIFICENCE, THEIR SALVATION—_

—could see them, faces a curious amalgamation of bird and animal and monster fit into a disconcertingly human framework, could see them all looking at him, _through_ him, at (_him_)—

—could feel their anticipation like the air was charged with it, his hair on end, a sense of excitement so acute that it was like a physical ache—

"Why aren't they doing anything?" Dean shouted over the rush of air (_and more, so much more_).

"They're waiting for him," Sam said. The pain in his head ratcheted up until it felt like somebody was sawing his cranium in two, but he laughed. "They're so sure he's going to win."

(_we will, sam. we will._)

Sam caught another presence, just beyond the column of smoke—an energy different in every way from the demons, blindingly bright. "Take care of him," Sam said, and Dean frowned at him in confusion, but Sam knew it had gotten through to whom it was meant for: he could feel it.

"Dean," Sam said. "We have to do this now."

Dean took a deep breath and pulled the ring-key out of his pocket. He threw it to the ground and recited the incantation that Death had taught him. The ground beneath the ring glowed and collapsed inward, pulling in air like an earth-bound black hole. Sam could feel the pull on a level beyond the physical—he shook like every atom in his body was simultaneously following and resisting it. He could feel warm blood trickling out of his ears, his nose, and he fell to his hands and knees, the pain blinding him to everything but—

(_and we shall rise together and have dominion over this beautiful world_)

Dean was next to him then, hands over his face and his arms and trying to pull him up, but that sensation was disappearing fast, and Sam tried to hold onto it, tried so hard—

And then he was speaking but he was _not_, not really, and he was not-saying, "Dean, Dean, it's okay, I think I've got this," and he was reaching out to touch Dean, except he was _not_, and he could see, like a different image superimposed on the original, exactly what was going to happen to Dean: dying, cut-open from chin to groin, leaking blood and entrails—

—_and he could do nothing to stop it—_

"Sam," Dean said, "Sam, you in there? Come on, man!"

Sam didn't know how Dean knew, how he could possibly tell, but it seemed to amuse (_him_). "That was uncharacteristically clever of you, I have to say," (_he_) said, and flicked (_his_) hand in a careless gesture. Dean went flying back, crashed into the Impala, and slumped to the ground, unconscious.

(_He_) turned to his army and spread his arms and called to them with the promise of all the world at their feet, burning and bleeding to the sound of their laughter. His army roared back, and Sam—

_there isn't a place he hasn't got to, no task he's thought impossible, no person he's deemed unworthy of saving._

—surged ahead, pushing and pushing—

_he hasn't always been right in his convictions, though; he's done terrible things, been blinded by his own arrogance, betrayed the people he loved and gotten those who cared for him killed._

—past every one of the bonds that Lucifer had used to tie him down—

_but he's never found a reason to stop trying._

—taking advantage of that one moment of weakness, when (_he_) hasn't settled in yet—

_he still has his brother's faith, the faith of those he loves. he's always had them, and he sees no reason to stop achieving the impossible now._

—and with one final effort, he threw himself back in control of his body.

The sudden overload of sensation was almost too much to bear; his head hurt like molten metal was being poured in his ears; his eyes nearly blinded; his skin so sensitive that the touch of the wind felt like he was being flayed with a knife.

But he could still feel the pull, and he knew what he had to do.

Sam half-stumbled, half-crawled to the open Cage, and finally stood at its edge. It stretched into an endless darkness, going on till the end of Earth and Hell and beyond. He could feel the demons start to get confused; the moment to act was _now_.

He turned back—and saw Dean, leaning against the Impala. Dean smiled. _It's okay. I'm here._

Sam smiled back. _Thank you_.

He closed his eyes, and jumped.

* * *

><p>The Trickster met him in the one infinite moment before he entered the Cage. Sam stood in the endless black, and felt more than saw the Trickster approach him.<p>

"Sam Winchester," he said, and there was a definite note of pride in his voice. "I hope you're ready."

_Yeah, sure._

"I mean, this isn't some place you can just jump back from when someone wants you to. This is _it_."

_I know that, already—just get on with it. _

"No reconsidering?"

_For god's sake—_

"This is important."

_I have to do this. It's never been more vital, and might never be again._

"Good luck, then."

Sam walked into the dark, and didn't look back.

**_Finis_**


End file.
